Housing: Construction

(asked on 21st June 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities:

To ask the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of a transition phase for the future homes standard, so that new developments that receive planning consents before 2025 can continue to build to existing standards.


Answered by
Eddie Hughes Portrait
Eddie Hughes
This question was answered on 29th June 2022

We have listened to calls for a swifter and more certain pathway to 2025 and our work on a full technical specification for the Future Homes Standard has been accelerated. We therefore intend to consult on this in Spring 2023 and introduce the necessary legislation in 2024, ahead of full implementation of the Future Homes Standard in 2025. A full impact assessment on the Future Homes Standard will be carried out ahead of implementation and published online.

As part of the consultation, we will consider what transitional arrangements are appropriate. Transitional arrangements are important as they provide all developers with certainty about the standards they are building to, and assurance that they should not have to make material amendments to work which is already underway when new Regulations came into force.

The Government recently introduced an uplift to the Building Regulations as a stepping stone to the Future Homes Standard. As part of the uplift, transitional arrangements were put in place which mean that if a developer submitted an initial notice, a building notice or full plans application to the local authority prior to the new Regulations coming into effect, on 15 June 2022, provided work then starts on the building by 15 June 2023, then work on that building is permitted to continue under the previous standards.  Monitoring the impact of the uplift and the associated transitional arrangements will be a key consideration in setting the transitional arrangements for the Future Homes Standard.

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