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New measures on housing standards

Posted at March 15, 2014 | By : | Categories : News | Comments Off on New measures on housing standards

The Government has launched plans aimed at making it easier and cheaper to build homes.

Currently, developers can face a myriad of different standards to implement each time they build new homes and Communities Minister, Stephen Williams, believes the system is complicated, confusing and ripe for reform.

The new measures will reduce 100 standards to fewer than 10 and bring down the numbers of pages of guidance from 1,000 to fewer than 100, thereby saving councils and developers both time and money.

Housing standards that will be abolished include:

  • requirements for rainwater harvesting in places that don’t suffer from water shortages
  • a requirement for more than 1 phone line to be installed – regardless of need
  • a requirement for compost bins and secure sheds in gardens

The measures also include scrapping rules that require house builders to get the same work checked by a range of different organisations – under the new system technical requirements will be assessed by building control bodies alone.

In addition, the minister has confirmed that the Government will develop a national space standard which will replace the variety of different space standards currently required by councils.

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