Future Homes Standard

Baroness Hayman Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2025 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Hayman]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to introduce the Future Homes Standard to ensure that new homes are energy efficient.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and I declare my interest as chair of Peers for the Planet.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)]

I thank the noble Baroness for her Question and for all the work that she does on environmental issues. The Future Homes Standard consultation, setting out proposals for new energy efficiency standards, closed last year. We received over 2,000 responses and we are carefully considering the feedback received. I do understand that the space caused by the election has caused more delay than we had hoped for, and the frustration and the need for creating some certainty here about what we are going to do going ahead. But we will publish our government response to the consultation and lay the associated legislation later this year. Those new standards will effectively preclude the use of gas boilers in future new-build homes and ensure they become zero carbon as the electricity grid fully decarbonises, without the need for any retrofitting.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that response. The bit I picked out was “later this year”. We are in January and, as she acknowledged, we have been waiting a long time for this. So I encourage her to have a government response to the consultation as soon as possible. Does she agree that the abandoning of energy efficiency standards that took place a decade ago has caused great damage to many people and has caused great costs to householders, and indeed to the Treasury for the support it had to give during the energy crisis? When the Government do respond to the consultation, will they ensure that the standards set are aimed at providing the lowest possible bills for householders and will avoid their need, to which she referred, for retrofitting?

[Baroness Taylor of Stevenage (Lab)]

I agree that we need to move on as quickly as possible with all of this, for three key reasons. We need to make sure that bills are kept as low as possible, particularly for those in fuel poverty who we are very conscious of, and the move to clean energy will help us with that. We also need to think about our energy security and we need to continue the drive towards net zero. I appreciate the frustration in delivering this, and when I say “later this year”, I want to reassure the noble Baroness that we are working with our colleagues in DESNZ as quickly as possible to deliver this, to set homes and buildings on a path away from the use of fossil fuels and to future-proof homes with low-carbon heating and high levels of building fabric standards, ensuring that they do not require any retrofitting to become zero carbon. We are working very hard on that and it is my mission to deliver that as quickly as possible.