DCLG sets up reviews of building regulations and housing standards

The Department for Communities and Local Government has set up an independent panel of building industry experts to review urgently the rules imposed on developers and housebuilders.

The Independent Challenge Panel has been asked to consider how the current system of building regulations and housing standards can be simplified and made easier to follow. It will report to ministers in the Spring of 2013.

A separate group will also look at the specific issue of standards applied to housebuilding. The DCLG said: “While some of these standards are applied nationally across certain types of homes such as affordable housing, others are made mandatory by individual councils for building in their area and some are entirely voluntary - resulting in confusion for local people and developers.”

The Department cited a number of examples of this in action, including standards being assessed repeatedly by different people such as planners, code assessors and building control officers. It said they were “often looking at the same issues but coming up with different answers”.

Housing standards that will be reviewed include the Code for Sustainable Homes, Secured by Design, Lifetime Homes, Standards and Quality in Development and the Homes and Communities Agency's Housing Quality Indicators.

The Local Government Association, the Planning Officers Society and the National Housing Federation are among the organisations represented on the housing standards review group.

Communities Minister Don Foster insisted that ‘essential’ safety and accessibility protections would be left untouched by the reviews. He also claimed that homes would still need to be built to high sustainability and quality standards.

Foster said: "The current array of different housing standards used in different parts of the country is complex and counter-productive: confusing local residents, councillors and developers. This is why an urgent review has now started, bringing the government together with housebuilders, planners, councils and architects to establish what the unnecessary measures are that we can cut out of the system, whilst ensuring buildings are still made to exacting standards.

"I want to see a simpler set of housing standards that people can easily understand and that free up developers and councils to get on with the job of building the high quality new homes we so badly to get more first time buyers and families onto the housing ladder."