Building regulation and sustainable housing. Part 3: setting and implementing standards Available to Purchase

In this final paper in the series we set out the energy efficiency standards which should be pursued over the next five to ten years. Compared with a business as usual scenario based on past improvements, our proposed standards could go a long way to nullify the increase in carbon dioxide emissions which would be expected from the projected increase in the size of the housing stock in the next 20 years (an increase of some 4 million by 2021). Such an approach would provide an important breathing space so as to allow the development of even higher new build standards and to allow improvements in the efficiency of the existing stock. In addition to establishing an improvement programme for 2000/1 and 2005/6 the paper also assesses a number of important implementation issues. It deals with the barriers of practicability, technical risk and cost and concludes that such barriers are largely perceptual. We argue that with the establishment of very clear goals and implementation programmes, the Government together with the house building industry could achieve significantly higher standards than current regulations without major upheaval and, in the process, take a very large step towards the overall goal of creating a truly sustainable housing stock.