HBF Technical Conference 2012

Posted on Friday, 18th November 2011

HBF Technical Conference 2012

We attended the Home Builders Federation Technical Conference 2012 in Birmingham on the 9th of this month. Speakers included Bob Ledsome from the DCLG, Neil Jefferson form Zero Carbon Hub and Terry Ritchie from Barratt Developments. The majority of the morning session focussed on sustainability issues and the main points we believe may be of interest to you are listed below:

· The Government is committed to improving the energy efficiency of new homes and has a commitment to be the greenest Government ever. However, this must be delivered alongside the "one in one out" approach to regulatory legislation and the desire to remove red tape in order to allow home builders to build.

· Consultations are now taking place into Part L 2013 and the results will be published in the middle of next year. Currently the regulations look like introducing a 44% improvement over Part L 2002 which is equivalent to the energy demands of Code 4. A consultation version of SAP 2013 will be released at the end of this month.

· Greater importance will be given to achieving energy and CO2 savings through fabric energy efficiency. Also, greater importance will be attached to ensuring that buildings perform as they are designed to do. This will eventually become a major theme but could take place later than 2013.

· There remains a commitment to reaching zero carbon in 2016 but there has been a crucial change in definition. Zero carbon will now only apply to regulated emissions (heating & lighting etc.) only rather than unregulated emissions (plug in & cooking appliances). This new definition will be easier to achieve and will be comparable to Code Level 5 rather than Code Level 6.

· The Zero Carbon Hub are currently putting pressure on lenders and valuers to put a premium on low energy housing. This is in response to the high levels of satisfaction expressed by the occupiers of such houses and the reduced cost of energy bills.