The Sustainable and Secure Buildings Bill is set to receive Royal Assent tomorrow (Thursday).
The Sustainable and Secure Buildings Bill is set to pass into law tomorrow (Thursday) when it receives Royal Assent.
The Private Members Bill sponsored by Liberal Democrat MP Andrew Stunell will allow the government to use building regulations to insist on more sustainable and secure constructions.
Jo Wheeler, sustainable policy officer at WWF, said: “The government must now undertake a review of existing building regulations to identify where the gaps in sustainability are.”
The Bill could be used to implement elements of the Code for Sustainable Buildings proposed by the Sustainable Buildings Task Group in its report, Better Buildings, Better Lives.
The Code will be based on the BRE BREEAM/EcoHomes standards and will be required for new buildings in the sustainable communities. The government said that it will present a draft of the Code at the Sustainable Communities Summit in January 2005.
The SBTG called for tough recycling targets to be included in the Code and demanded a 25% improvement in energy efficiency and a 25% cut in water usage for new homes.
Proposed amendments to Part L, the building regulation governing energy, do not contain specific targets relating to sustainability. But it does propose allowing designers to offset the energy performance of the building envelope against sustainable heating systems such as solar panels.
