Last Friday (7 November), the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) concluded its latest consultation on its housing standards review.
The technical consultation sought views on the DCLG’s proposed implementation of its changes to the Building Regulations and housing standards, with the aim of simplifying the rules that house builders must comply with.
In the consultation, the DCLG put forward its proposals to consolidate the existing rules into five standards: water efficiency; solid waste storage; access; home security; and space. These, with the exception of space, will be contained with an amended version of the Building Regulations. The Government does not believe that there is a case for statutory regulation in the area of ‘space’, although it does consider that there is a need for a national space standard to replace the many different existing space standards used by local authorities, so that local authorities, communities and neighbourhoods can influence the size of development in their local area.
Although the proposals appear to increase the complexity of the Building Regulations, the Government believes that scrapping alternative regulations and guidance, and restricting some local planning authority freedoms to implement their own local requirements will reduce bureaucracy and save administrative costs for both developers and local authorities.
The Government will publish its official response to the consultation in due course. If implemented, these new standards will be laid before Parliament in early 2015 and come into force in Autumn 2015.
