26
ROUND TABLE REVIEW
airtightness, and including MVHR in schemes, although our round table confi rmed all as being essential to Passivhaus.
The takeup problem
It is well-established that Passivhaus buildings save up to 90% of the typical energy consumed for heating and cooling, and some buildings don’t even require additional space heating at all, however only 2% of homes currently built are certifi ed. While the debate touched on reasons for the relatively low takeup in the UK, it also celebrated the great at-scale examples, from St Sidwells Leisure Centre in Exeter, to the Stirling Prize-winning social housing scheme Goldsmith Street in Norwich, and Agar Grove affordable housing in London. The fi rst phase of the latter was on a par with average build cost per m2
, and Goldsmith Street was even lower, coming in at a modest 1,875 m2. This was a crucial learning to communicate,
given that industry’s costs had infl ated by 91% since 2012. The chair James Parker framed the opening discussion by saying that Passivhaus at scale was an incredible opportunity to achieve a raft of energy and carbon savings “in one hit,” but it did mean that the industry would need to discard the prevalent “that’ll do” approach to construction of buildings, and “embrace surgical precision and a painstaking focus on the details,” whether this was tackling thermal bridges or taping all junctions.
The round table tackled several of the assumptions made around Passivhaus, such as it being prohibitively expensive or diffi cult. But, as co-sponsor Hugh Franklin from Aeroseal UK put it, it required a much higher level of ambition than the ‘do the minimum’ he said was commonly seen in project meetings: “Passivhaus isn’t asking us to meet minimums. It’s asking us to be brave and bold – that’s a wild change for people.”
But one of the key learnings was that high-density Passivhaus could provide the cost savings on other, lower density options that might help it become a more mainstream proposition. At the same time, the industry needed to share approaches and understanding more, particularly given the unlikelihood of major Government levers being applied. Answering the chair’s question of whether Passivhaus should be mandated by Government in England (as it is soon to be, at least for an ‘equivalent’ standard, in Scotland), Franklin said that that the industry should be looking to Ireland, where there had been a “market-led drive” to Passivhaus at scale in residential, citing one major builder “committed to improving the fabric of low rise housing” using Passivhaus. He added that in Ireland, “It’s Government encouraged. It’s not mandated. It’s all moving that way.” We looked at how to drive industry culture, training, but also standardisation in the hope of helping grow Passivhaus (without killing innovation), but also critically how it was one of the few tools available to provide a clear, unambiguous benchmark on quality against the current major drivers to improve standards in UK construction.
Anne-Marie Fallon gave a strong case that Passivhaus was the answer for serving the dual drivers of the incoming Single Construction Regulator (mooted for 2028 and covering building safety, product regulation, and contractor licensing), alongside the
“consumer protection reform that is coming through DESNZ.” She said Passivhaus stood as a ready-made solution to the “fundamental issue of not understanding what quality is or what it looks like.” Fallon added that in this respect Passivhaus was a “framework to hang all of that building regulation on… it’s about building quality, accountability, transparency…we already have Homes England identifying that Passive House is one of the only methodologies that can give you a healthy home.”
Other participants agreed that Passivhaus was a proven but
under-adopted framework for quality and comfort, and one, Joel Callow of Beyond Carbon, held that energy use in properties “was the problem, not carbon, and Passivhaus hits that bullseye directly.”
Mandates versus incentives
The group had mixed views on whether the Government should be mandating Passivhaus for new builds in the commercial and residential sectors, in the way Scotland has done (albeit in a ‘Passivhaus equivalent’ model for Scottish homes). Ann-Marie Fallon said that current Government policy “prioritises clean heat over effi ciency, which is backwards.” Attzaz Rashid of Barratt London, who have committed to building all new homes Passivhaus Certifi ed, warned about policy confl icts (for example “mandated heat networks” in London) making Passivhaus-type ambition unviable: “This kind of mandated de facto position in London just kills any ambition of anyone doing anything like Passivhaus…we’re defi nitely trying to break down those barriers.” Joel Callow on the other hand had scepticism around adding
to the “smorgasbord of contradictory regulation” already present, adding that Part L is “actively opposing Passivhaus by not showing the benefi ts that it actually brings.” Most delegates agreed that rather than Government mandates for Passivhaus, what was needed was incentives for clients and developers to pursue the method, but also as in the words of builder Daniel Levey, “proper education on the benefi ts.” In terms of the ‘carrot versus stick’ debate for increasing uptake, several in the group favoured incentives and outcome-based rules over simple prescriptive approaches Mike Roe, Passivhaus Certifi er at WARM, said that mandating Passivhaus was “dangerous; if we keep on mandating it, we’re always going to get pushback.” Instead he wondered whether there were “ways of incentivising Passivhaus, i.e. if you did Passivhaus, it smoothed the way.” Lorna Taverner from Willmott Dixon however reckoned that the industry had to pursue “the carrot and the stick” to make developers take up the approach: “If they don’t want to, they will fi nd a way not to do it.” One potential ‘planning incentive’ mooted was the idea of faster approvals granted if teams delivered Certifi ed Passivhaus.
Cundey argued for mandating “sensible ventilation,” saying “if we are going to mandate things, let’s look at mandating a sensible ventilation solution rather than a four-inch bathroom fan. If we put MVHR in as the baseline, then people will start saying, ‘What’s the next solution after that?’”
Aaron McCarthy of Hive said that the Passivhaus community was growing, but Government incentives were needed to grow it further, and that each new project “becomes a new benchmark.”
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ADF SEPTEMBER 2026
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