The Housing Forum’s latest report “Rationalising regulation for growth and innovation”, published last week, was written in part to respond to the Government’s Red Tape Challenge.
The Housing Forum took a wider look at the impact of regulation on cost and efficiency in the sector, and argued that regulation should be reformed and streamlined. With over 200 regulations covering housebuilding, not to take action would be a further drag on growth.
This brought us into dialogue with the Cabinet Office, who wanted to know more about the housing industry’s reaction to reforming regulation.
We found plenty of evidence of overlapping, and sometimes conflicting regulation, which inevitably adds to costs and discourages innovation. Regulations include Lifetime Homes and Design Council Cabe’s Building for Life; the Homes and Community Agency’s Housing Quality Indicators, and the Mayor of London’s Housing Design Standards.
In addition, the report argues that better informed consumers are more effective than regulation, so a simple system of labelling the housing we build or refurbish – starting with space and energy – is needed.
Publication of the report coincided with our National Conference held on 26th April, which also gave us the opportunity to survey the industry. Our delegates were a cross-sector audience of 30% housing associations, ALMOS and councils, 22% house-builders and contractors, 20 % manufacturers and 28% professional practitioners.
The results show 91% say that they agree with our argument that National Building Regulations be adapted to accommodate a section for housing. Space labelling is also strongly supported with 98% saying that their business would value the introduction of consistent standard labelling for new homes with simple metrics on space and energy performance, while 74% supported the same system of labelling on existing or second hand homes.
Certainty of time scale for the introduction of regulations relating to technical performance was supported and most (74%) felt that a time period of 5 years was right.
With energy performance increasing in importance, 64% of Housing Forum members though that there should be some kind of financial incentive to encourage higher energy performing homes, e.g. a cut in stamp duty.
Our recommendation in the report would be that existing standards be either subsumed – or deregulated completely – and that we operate with a system of the National Planning Policy Framework; National Building Regulations, adapted to include a section on housing; local standards; and a social housing standard for schemes which benefit from public subsidy.
Shelagh Grant is chief executive of the Housing Forum
