Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
10 MARCH 2004
PHIL HOPE
MP AND MR
PAUL EVERALL
Q1 Chairman: We are a fraction early,
but, if you do not have any objection, my eyesight can be a bit
defective and we can decide it is a quarter past.
Phil Hope: That is fine by me.
Q2 Chairman: Can I welcome you to the
Committee. Can you identify your team for our inquiry into the
Building Regulations?
Phil Hope: Yes. Philip Hope, Parliamentary
Under Secretary of State with responsibility for Building Regulations.
Beside me is Paul Everall, who is Head of the Buildings Division
within the ODPM.
Q3 Chairman: Do you want to say anything
by way of introduction?
Phil Hope: Yes, please, if I may,
just a few words, Chair. I have to say it is very timely to have
a hearing at this moment, because it has been a very busy time
in the world of building regulations. We are in the process, as
you probably know, of completing the passage of the Sustainable
and Secure Buildings Bill, which is another private Members Bill
led by Andrew Stunell, but it is one that we are actively supporting
through the process. The Division, as you may be aware, is currently
undertaking a major review of Part B of the regulations on fire
safety. No doubt you may have questions about that later. Of course
that is very much in the public mind at present. May I just say,
we will be responding in detail to the Committee's report on the
Fire Service, including the Building Regulations point you make
for the future, and, of course, we are very busy with the work
on the Energy White Paper, or the follow up work to that, and
the Building Energy Performance Directive. Can I take this opportunity,
if I may, Chair, because I am pleased to be able to announce today
that I have asked the Building Regulations Advisory Committee
(BRAC) to review the housing evidence of Part M of the Building
Regulation and its associated guidance, the Approved Document
M, to see whether it would be practicable to incorporate the Lifetime
Homes Standard. This is a very important development as far as
we are concerned in government. It was in 1999 when my Right Honourable
Friend the Minister of State wrote the foreword to the Joseph
Rowntree Report on Part M and Lifetime Home Standards and, five
years on, we can now look forward to taking this work forward.
It is one of our continuing commitments to encourage better design
and to build inclusive communities with improved quality of life
for all; and the accent, of course, is on accessibility and design
features to make it a home flexible enough to meet whatever comes
in life. I will not say more at this stage, Chair. It is a very
good opportunity, I think. Today was very timely, as far as we
were concerned, to have this opportunity to make that announcement
and to take forward that initiative.
Chairman: Thank you very much.
Q4 Mr O'Brien: On the last point about
lifetime home standards, the report of the Committee as to
that Housing Bill recommended that the Government should take
on board this question of the lifetime of standards. Why has it
taken so long?
Phil Hope: It has taken five years
since, as I said, my honourable friend wrote that foreword. I
think we have had to look long and hard at how we could do this
in a way that had full public support. It has been interesting.
I think some public funding agencies had taken up the cudgels
quite well and adopted it as a voluntary standard by the house
building industry—they have taken it up but not necessarily
house builders generally. So we think now we have the opportunity
to amend Part M to bring lifetime homes, and I think it will make
a real difference because it will mean that a building, any building,
can accommodate changes in lifestyle, whether it is a teenager
with a broken leg, a family member with a serious illness, even
parents carrying in heavy shopping and dealing with a push-chair:
all these issues that people deal with in their every day lives
in their homes means that we will now be able to regulate to ensure
that all new homes come up to this new standard. It has taken
time, we have had to look at these things closely and the burdens
that it might impose, but we now think it is right that we go
out to consultation on incorporating this as part of the Building
Regulations.
Q5 Chairman: What is the timescale?
Phil Hope: We hope to carry this
out within the next few months. We have to, as you know, not only
go out to consultation, we have to produce a regulatory impact
assessment on the costs and benefits, and I hope we can carry
that out over the next year or so. I do not know if we have a
final end date in mind.
Mr Everall: Not exactly as such.
It always takes a little time to develop proposals. The Building
Regulations Advisory Committee at its last meeting last month
agreed a programme of work in terms of developing a new Approved
Document. If I can go back to your earlier question, the changes
we made in 1999 were very radical. This is the first time house
builders have been forced to provide facilities and access for
disabled people, and whenever we make a change to the Building
Regulations we always go back a couple of years later to see how
effective those changes have been, and we wanted to feed those
into the review that we have just embarked upon. So we will look
how well the 1999 changes have worked, we will look at what lifetime
home standards would mean in terms of additional benefits, but
unfortunately too there are additional costs. If every new house
had to have a downstairs shower room, that is probably going to
push up the cost of housing.
Q6 Chairman: It is much cheaper than
adaptations, is it not?
Mr Everall: Certainly.
Q7 Chairman: Local authorities now are
spending huge amounts of money on adapting for disabled people.
So what we should be doing is putting those expenses and building
them into new housing. Surely that is a better—
Phil Hope: I think you are right.
One researcher's report has estimated that lifetime homes could
lead to considerable savings to tax payers, over something like
£5.5 billion over the next 60 years as a result of the reduced
cost of adaptations and frankly the reduced need for re-housing
and residential care and all the other things that people need.
Q8 Chairman: In the experience of officers
in the Department, could you give us some idea as to what the
tax payer will do?
Mr Everall: Timescale?
Q9 Chairman: Yes.
Mr Everall: I think it will take
us about a year to develop the proposals, consulting people like
the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, consulting local authorities,
because in a previous incarnation I used to be responsible for
disabled facility grants. I am very aware of the issues arising.
I anticipate it will take us about a year to develop the proposals.
We will then have the usual three-month consultation period allowing
everybody to have their say on the proposals and try and regulate
as soon as possible thereafter.
Q10 Chairman: When you say "regulate
as soon as possible thereafter", will that apply to everything
that is built when the new regulations come in or will there be
a phasing in period?
Phil Hope: I think we would anticipate
that we would want the regulations to apply from then on. It would
depend on the regulatory impact assessment—that is the purpose
of the consultation, Chair. Essentially, we want to make sure
that that which we do introduce will not provide undue barriers
and burdens but do, nonetheless, put in place action at the earliest
opportunity.
Mr Everall: When we regulate we
normally publish at the same time something called an Approved
Document—this is an example—which provides guidance,
and we then normally allow six months between the making of the
regulations and the coming into force date. That is to allow building
control officers, architects, everybody who needs to become familiar
with the new guidance, to be up to speed by the coming into force
date. It would then apply to all new houses, subject to some technical
transitional arrangements, which were built after that date.
Q11 Chairman: So there is no reason why
architects who are now starting to design buildings that are going
to be built over the next three to four years should not be taking
this into account?
Phil Hope: That is absolutely
right. I would hope, Chair, that in seeing the announcement that
I have made today this will give an added spur to exactly that
kind of behaviour among everyone involved in the building industry.
Q12 Chairman: Given the price of new
building, the £250-£300 that is talked about for making
lifetime homes, that is a very small extra cost, is it not?
Phil Hope: I think I would share
your view on that, Chair, but, of course, the regulatory impact
assessment would need to undertake a thorough look at all the
costs and benefits before we could finally publish the regulations;
but you have made a very sound point.
Chairman: Thank you very much. Clive
Betts?
Q13 Mr Betts: The Energy White Paper
2003 said that it was going to raise the standards of energy conservation
in the Building Regulations. Would any of the changes that were
proposed or intended provide prescriptive standards for new properties?
Phil Hope: Yes, we are at the
moment in the middle of revising Part L fairly substantially,
and the initial performance of the Buildings Directive and the
Part L Building Regulations Review gave us a big opportunity to
look at ways of raising the energy performance of buildings. We
are in the middle of that review as we speak, and we hope to be
presenting to the Building Regulations Advisory Committee in May
of this year proposals for revising Part L followed by formal
consultations this summer.
Q14 Mr Betts: So it is going to be definite
improvements to the levels that have to be hit rather than general
encouragement to do better?
Phil Hope: Yes. As I said, we
are in the middle of revising Part L, so the nature of those
recommendations is currently being discussed as we speak. I regret,
I cannot tell you today, as it were, the nature of those discussions
because we have not finished them yet, but there will be consultation
this year with the proviso.
Mr Everall: If I could add one
point? If I followed your question, you said "prescriptive"?
Q15 Mr Betts: Yes?
Mr Everall: The Building Regulations
we have are not that sort of system in the sense that they are
goal-based regulations backed up by Approved Documents, and this
is technically guidance and not absolutely to be followed. So,
we will give great encouragement to particular forms of energy
conservation and, indeed, it will be very difficult to comply
with the regulations without, for example, fitting "low E"
double glazing, even at the present stage. So we will give a strong
steer to various forms of energy conservation measure, but, if
the developer wants to try and convince the building control officer
that what he is proposing is at least as good, and preferably
better, than the guidance given in the Approved Document, then
he or she will be able to do so.
Q16 Mr Betts: But the end result for
the person buying the house ought to be the same in terms of energy
conservation?
Mr Everall: In terms of targets,
yes, in terms of what we are trying to achieve in terms of energy
conservation.
Q17 Chairman: What happens? Does someone
walk into a room and measure how efficient the heating in that
room is in terms of not escaping?
Mr Everall: Not usually.
Q18 Chairman: Can you explain to me how
you do this energy assessment for a building?
Mr Everall: In formulating the
energy parts of Building Regulations we have targets in mind and
how much carbon we are going to try and save. There are three
methods by which people can comply with Part L of the Building
Regulations. They can do it by making sure that each of the components
is energy efficient, so walls must meet a certain u-value, windows
must meet a certain u-value, floors, walls, etcetera. Or it is
possible to calculate something called a u-value for the whole
house, the whole building. That is an alternative way. Now we
are moving forward in terms of trying to develop methods of carbon
measurement, again which is calculated—there is no such
thing as a carbon meter with which you can go round and measure
these things, but you can calculate that by designing a house
in a certain way you will save so many tons of carbon.
Q19 Mr Betts: What you do with Building
Regulations is to give guidance out about how you may achieve
these targets, but, if the developer says, "I think there
is another way of doing it", then the inspector will give
consideration to that alternative?
Mr Everall: Yes, he has to convince
the building control officer that what he is doing is at least
as good as the guidance that he has been given.
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