New Housing: Environmental Standards

Debate between Ellie Chowns and Graham Stringer

Thursday 12th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members to bob if they wish to speak so that I can see who wants to speak. Some people have written in—I have a list here. Please be patient if I get names wrong, because everybody’s face is new. I will try very hard to get it right.

[Ellie Chowns (North Herefordshire) (Green)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered environmental standards for new housing.

I thank the Minister and all colleagues here for attending. This is the first time I have led a Westminster Hall debate, so please bear with me if I get the procedures wrong. We have lots of time today, so I welcome interventions and hope we can have a useful debate and conversation on this vital topic.

I want to begin by saying that I recognise that there have been some warm words from the Government on this topic. I look forward to hearing more detail from the Minister today. I called for this debate because, although I have heard one or two warm words in the last two and a bit months, I have not heard any detail. In fact, I have been concerned about hearing nothing specific whatsoever in the Secretary of State’s speeches that I have listened to. The Government have made major commitments on building new housing and it is crucial to consider what type of housing, so I wish to start by outlining three reasons why I think this is a really important debate to have.

First, it is absolutely topical. The Government, as we have heard on numerous occasions—indeed, just five minutes ago in the previous debate—have committed to building 1.5 million new houses over the next five years, but what sort of homes will they be? In the Green party we specify that we need to think about the right homes in the right place at the right price. Today I want to talk about what “right homes” means, because it is not just about quantity; it is also about quality and the need to think long term when new homes are built.

The Climate Change Committee did a report on the UK’s housing stock in 2019. It estimated that in 2050 80% of houses in this country will be houses that are already built, so we clearly have a massive job to do when we think about environmental standards and retrofitting the buildings that we already have. However, I am concerned to discuss the 20% of houses that will be new, because the worst possible outcome could be that we build lots and lots of new houses but to poor standards, thus requiring the retrofitting of those houses, too, so let us focus on new build homes.

The second reason why the debate is important is the scale of the issue relating to houses. Our built environment controls or influences roughly half of UK environmental impacts. Domestic housing accounted for more than a quarter of energy use in the UK in the last year for which we have statistics. Heating accounts for the largest single share of emissions from buildings. The fabric of buildings is crucial in controlling the impact of the housing and broader building sector on the natural environment and climate.

Thirdly, this topic is crucial because we have a massive win-win-win opportunity here. This is not just about reducing carbon emissions from housing, which is certainly very important and I will come on to that later. It is also about ensuring that new homes are warm, affordable to heat and not mouldy but great for people to live in. Just this week in the Chamber there was a debate about how people can stay warm in winter. We need to make sure that all new homes are built to the highest possible standards so that we do not have people shivering in their homes and choosing between heating and eating. Of course, this is a fantastic opportunity to give the economy a great big boost, creating thousands of high-skilled jobs. If we get this right, it will be a fantastic opportunity for economic renewal. We know that investing up front is much cheaper than having to retrofit later, so let us do this right from the start.

I wrote to the Minister for Housing and Planning before the recess about the timing of the release of the future homes standard, which has been in the works for quite some time now—we were consulting on it back in 2019-20, and again in 2023-24. In his response to me, the Minister said that the Government will release it in due course. If he is able to do so, I would love the Minister to provide some clarification on the timetable for publication of the standard; it is supposed to start implementation next year, which is only three and a half months away, so time is of the essence. Of course, it is vital that the policy is right, and not just fast, but, as we have had so many years to develop it, I would hope that it could be published ASAP.

This is not a new topic. One of the helpful briefings I read in preparation for this debate, from the House of Commons Library, which I recommend to everyone—it produces fantastic materials—reminded me that in 2006, the then Labour Government said that they would amend the building regulations to require all new homes to have net zero carbon emissions by 2016. Of course, that policy was scrapped by the Conservatives in 2015, but we are now eight years on from the point at which Labour previously thought that all new homes should be net zero carbon. This is the moment for the new Labour Government to fulfil that promise and put in place regulations to ensure that ambition will actually come to pass—better late than never.

I will speak today about five key aspects of environmental standards for new housing: maximising energy efficiency; minimising embodied carbon; maximising on-site energy generation, particularly rooftop solar; maximising biodiversity in the construction of new homes; and maximising resilience against things like flooding and overheating, which will become more and more important as time goes by and climate change becomes a reality that hits us ever harder.

The first aspect is maximising energy efficiency. To meet the Government’s own carbon targets, almost all buildings will need to fully decarbonise. It is not just me who says that—it was in the Government’s heat and buildings strategy back in 2021. That is what the future homes standard was supposed to ensure. However, the version of the future homes standard that is being consulted on is looking at a 75% improvement on 2013 levels by 2030, which is neither good enough nor strong enough. We need to get to all homes being net zero carbon as soon as possible.

I do not expect the Government to introduce measures whereby every single building has to be built to that standard in 2025, but the industry needs a glide path. We need the Government to set that strategy to provide a framework within which the industry can sort out supply chain issues, both in terms of materials and, crucially, through upskilling, so that we are building zero carbon houses, not ones that are just a bit more efficient than the previous ones. The previous Conservative Government were very pleased to talk at length—I wanted to say “to bang on”—about the fact that more houses are reaching EPC C standard than 15 years ago, and that is indeed true. However, virtually no houses are reaching EPC A or B; that figure has increased from 1% to 3% of houses over the past 15 years. Almost no new houses are being built to those really high standards, which is what we need. Of course, there are major problems with energy performance certificates and the standards assessment procedure that underpins them—I am not pretending that that does not need review, and I commend the moves that are being made in that direction. However, we need to recognise that, flawed as it might be as a metric, it is telling us something really quite serious and worrying, which is that housing quality is not increasing at anywhere close to the rate that it needs to.

Key to reducing energy demand is fabric-first design. That needs to be absolutely integral to the future homes standard. It is deeply concerning that the previous Government claimed that the 2021 changes to building regulations were sufficient, and refused to tighten them any further. It is utterly wrong-headed. In making buildings more energy-efficient, fabric-first must be central. I would welcome a commitment from the Minister that fabric-first will be core to the future homes standard.

I also ask the Minister to lift the restriction placed by the previous Government on local authorities setting higher standards for house building in their areas. I do not think that local authorities setting piecemeal higher standards is the way we will get to a decarbonised housing sector, but we should not hold them back from going further and faster while we wait for Government to show the necessary leadership on a national level. We have too much piecemeal policy on this, both between local authorities and between the four nations of the UK. We need to ensure that we are united in a race to the top for standards, not a race to the bottom.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Before I call the hon. Lady to resume her speech, this is probably a good opportunity to remind hon. Members that we are all on a learning curve, and interventions should be short and to the point. We do not have a lot of Members here, so it will not be difficult for you to catch my eye if you want to make a speech yourself.

[Ellie Chowns]

Thank you, Mr Stringer, and I will compensate by being very brief in my response to the intervention by saying that I agree absolutely.

I have talked about the need to maximise energy efficiency. Let me move on to my second point: the need to minimise embodied carbon. In the future homes standard, we have some discussion of minimising operational carbon emissions. There is concern here not just from me. Back in 2022, in its report on the sustainability of the built environment, the Environmental Audit Committee expressed real concern that

“policy has focused entirely on operational emissions”,

and that it does not require the embodied carbon cost of construction to be assessed or controlled in any way. The Royal Institute of British Architects is deeply concerned about this, as are others.

In their response to the Environmental Audit Committee’s report, the previous Government recognised that embodied carbon can account for a very significant proportion of a building’s whole-life carbon emissions. They agreed that a standardised method was needed, and said that they would consult on embodied carbon. In a consultation from November 2023 to March 2024 on the future homes standard, the Government said that embodied carbon was outside the scope of consultation on the future homes standard, but that they would consult on it separately.

Does the Minister agree that embodied carbon needs to be part of the future homes standard? We cannot talk only about operational and not embodied carbon. It has been left behind—effectively the poor relation—in the need to assess the carbon impact of new house building. This urgently needs to be rectified. I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments and, I hope, assurance that as much attention will be paid to embodied carbon as to operational carbon, because it is so significant in the whole-life carbon costs of any new housing.

I move on to my third point: maximising on-site energy generation. I have brought up this topic—the need to ensure that all new homes have solar panels—once or twice in the House already since I have been here. I would be delighted to be known as Mrs Solar Panel by the end of this Parliament. I would be even more delighted if, by the end of this year, we had the regulations necessary to ensure that every roof of a new home had solar panels on it because, frankly, that is what is colloquially known as a no-brainer.

Solar panels are one of the things that residents brought up with me time and again on the doorstep. Constituents of all sorts of political background and none said to me things like, “Why are we still building houses and not putting solar panels on the roofs?” It is something with which people have a real, visceral connection. They see new houses going up around them that do not have solar panels on the roofs, and they know that we need to sort out energy generation. Let’s ensure that we maximise use of these wonderful surfaces that are already there. This is a classic example of where it would be much cheaper to put that technology in place at the point of construction, rather than retrofitting it afterwards. I cannot help but conclude that it has not been done so far only because developers are resisting anything that might increase their costs.

Developers are concerned only with the construction costs; we as lawmakers and as a Government should be concerned with the long-term social, public and environmental costs. Of course, this sort of investment pays for itself many times over during the lifetime of the technology. I warmly invite the Minister to confirm that his Government will bring forward measures to put solar panels on roofs as default, either within the future homes standard, the planning and infrastructure Bill or another appropriate legislative mechanism.

My fourth point is about maximising biodiversity. In the words of the 2021 Dasgupta review,

“Our economies, livelihoods and well-being all depend on our most precious asset: Nature.”

This Government have talked a great deal about growth. Unfortunately, the way we currently measure growth does not take account of the costs of the destruction of the natural assets we have. There have been some welcome moves towards recognition of the need to take account of impacts on biodiversity during construction, with the introduction of biodiversity net gain and so on, but so much more could be done. We could specify having bird and bat boxes for the 1.5 million new houses—wouldn’t it be wonderful to have 1.5 million new bird and bat boxes for the creatures with whom we share this beautiful natural environment? Ponds are good for drainage and for wildlife. Let us take into account lighting design and how light pollution impacts nature if we are building these 1.5 million new houses. We could specify hedgehog highways—little holes cut in fences so that hedgehogs can get from one garden to the next—as well as bee-friendly plants, green roofs and walls, trees, hedges and so on.

We have a real opportunity. People are rightly concerned about the effects on the natural environment of the construction of lots of new homes. We certainly need new homes constructed—they should be affordable and accessible to the people who really need them—but let’s not make it an either/or. Let’s not plaster the country with tarmac in some places while keeping less and less space free for nature. Let’s ensure that whatever new housing we are building recognises that we can also create space for nature to live alongside us and to thrive in those areas, too.

A classic example, and a personal favourite, is swift bricks. For just £30, we could put in place a swift brick in every new house to ensure that these beautiful creatures, whose populations have sadly declined by 60% over the past 30 years, can thrive again. I am not just saying this because both my sons grew up playing for Ledbury Swifts football club, meaning that these birds have a special place in my heart; they should have a special place in all our hearts. Let’s make sure that every new house has a swift brick.

My fifth point is on maximising resilience. We must face up to the fact that the climate crisis means that some extremes of weather will be baked in. We must recognise that adaptation has to be part of what we do, as well as mitigation of the climate impact.

I have seen that very personally. I represent North Herefordshire, and in early 2020 Herefordshire was affected by the worst floods that we have had in 400 years of records. Last winter, we had the wettest 18 months on record in the UK. Such events have major impacts on people’s homes, and we have to take them into account when we build new homes. So, please, may we ensure that the future homes standard and the regulations that go alongside it recognise the reality of the need to be more resilient with issues such as flooding and overheating?

Overheating does not occur much in my constituency, but it is certainly an issue in urban constituencies. Former office blocks are converted into housing through permitted development, but often that entails terrible conditions for the people who end up living in those places. Personally, I think that that should not be allowed to happen. Overheating is a significant issue in such buildings. Let us ensure that overheating and flooding are recognised in resilience planning in new housing.

Finally, water scarcity and efficiency—it is not just energy that we need to use efficiently, but water. That was the topic of my doctorate, although not in this country. Let us ensure that we use these pure resources as carefully and efficiently as possible. Again, that needs to be built in, baked in, right at the start of building new houses.

I have a present for the Minister to take away. A few years ago, in Herefordshire, we developed a thing called “Herefordshire Future Homes”, in which we assessed a whole range of building standards, because of the bewildering array of initiatives in place. The industry is now coalescing around the net zero housing standard, which is good news, but we also looked at things such as water efficiency, biodiversity and so on. I will give this document to the Minister after the debate to feed into his work.

Let me remind the Minister what the Government could and should do. They could ensure that all new homes had ultra-high levels of energy efficiency and were built to an EPC A standard right now, with a glide path through to net zero housing standards as soon as possible. Let us resist the pressure from developers to water down the standards, and let us give local authorities the freedom they need to put in place higher standards initially. Let us incorporate embodied carbon in the future homes standard, and set regulations for whole-life carbon limits aligned with the industry’s building standard of net zero carbon.

I have not mentioned this much, but waste and recycling in construction is a core and enormous part of our waste economy. There are significant opportunities for a more circular economy approach. Let us also specify that all new homes should have solar panels on top and swift bricks everywhere. Let us ensure that all new homes are climate change-resilient.

Now is such an important opportunity for the Government to show leadership. As I said at the beginning of the debate, I confess to being somewhat frustrated that they have not taken the opportunity of their major, high-attention speeches on planning and infrastructure—nothing whatever about building quality. There is an opportunity to rectify that, and I would love to hear not only the Minister’s response, but even more, the Secretary of State integrating building quality into everything that she says about building new houses going forward. I look forward to the Minister’s response.