Architype

Good news! Government scraps Code for Sustainable Homes…..

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I welcome the scrapping of the Code for Sustainable Homes, because I believe that it had become a tick box exercise that was doing little to improve the sustainability of new houses in the UK.

I paraphrase Oscar Wilde, and say that by ‘trying to give a relative (environmental) price to everything, Code ended up understanding the value of nothing’.

Too often it ended up with the mindless addition of features simply to score points, sometimes at the expense of what would actually be a more sustainable solution. Its ultimate aim of making each building zero-carbon is a flawed concept, because it is based on perceiving each building as an isolated carbon island, and requires offsetting of carbon rather than the reduction of energy consumption.

However, the Government’s motivation in doing this is completely wrong. Whereas they want to reduce regulation and allow the market to let standards fall, I believe that they should introduce Passivhaus as the minimum standard required by Building Regulations.

Being independently certified, it offers a simple way of delivering a quality assured standard of design and construction, and would deliver massive reductions in energy consumption.

Simple efficiency, instead of complex box ticking.

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