Housing Rules

Readers who heard of the plans to tackle "bin blight" and were keen to read more on a similar theme, need look no further than today's consultation on the review of housing standards. Bin storage 

is only a sub chapter in a much bigger opus explaining the proposals to reduce the range and number of "standards" imposed on the building of new homes - in favour of a set of more relevant and national standards.

It would be difficult to do proper justice here to what is a surprisingly readable consultation based on the work of the Local Housing Delivery Group (which group has also proposed a set of national standards). The key point is that standards relating to

housing construction should be contained within Building Regulations rather than partly in Building Regulations and partly elsewhere e.g. Code for Sustainable Homes or local plan policies relating to on site renewable.

Importantly, the proposal is to wind down the role of the Code for Sustainable Homes and to move away from local plan policies specifying how much energy new homes should obtain from on site renewable. This was probably inevitable given the proposed 

changes to the Building Regulations, in the context of zero carbon homes, but it will be a significant change for a number of local planning authorities comfortable with imposing conditions around Code level and on site renewable.