Housing: Future Homes Standard

Lord Best Excerpts

Thursday 21st March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I am very much in favour of the review, but I do not want to prejudge it; it is important that it be left to take its own course. Picking up a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Andrews, it is certainly important to examine the durability of the standards with a view to not only people who are disabled but people who are ageing. We have an ageing population, and the Government are very much committed to the industrial strategy grand challenge mission on ageing. That is quite a mouthful, but it means aiming for people to live five extra years in good health by 2035, so it plays into this agenda. However, I do not think that we should prejudge the consultation.

[Lord Best (CB)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Sustainable Energy Association. We greatly welcome the Chancellor’s move to require housebuilders to up their standards of energy efficiency and carbon-neutral housebuilding. The technique of using building regulations to make housebuilders do things they otherwise would not must apply also to accessible housing. Exhorting housebuilders to do the right thing and produce more accessible homes does not get us anywhere. They are doing very well as it is, thank you. We need those building regulations changed in a compulsory way, as the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, stated, to do the great things the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, has advocated for so long.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Lord does much good work in this area, for which I thank him. He makes a powerful case but it is for those reasons that we had the Hackitt review, are holding a review of building regulations and will act as a consequence. Things are moving in that direction. Those are not the only things happening, of course—for example, the ECO places an obligation on energy companies so that energy bills are lower and less carbon energy is used—but they are central. Again, I speak to the importance of document M on accessible housing. The requirement to take account of the interests of people with disabilities and an ageing population is provided for in the NPPF—the planning framework—and the Neighbourhood Planning Act. It is all moving in that direction.