The Government has recently announced a new measure to reduce “unnecessary and confusing red tape” for house builders.
Last September, the Government consulted on its proposed implementation of its changes to the Building Regulations and housing standards, with the aim of consolidating and simplifying the rules that house builders must comply with – further details are here. The review aimed to remove technical building standards applied at a local level and replace them with fewer standards, applied at a national level via the Building Regulations.
The Government put forward 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, are to be contained with an amended version 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.
Although the implementation of the change is dependant on the progress of the Deregulation Bill 2014, which will remove unnecessary bureaucracy and regulatory burden on businesses, the Department for Communities and Local Government published a statement of new regulations on 30 December 2014, which confirmed that the change it is expected to come into force by 30 June 2015.
