What is the Future Homes Standard?

If it wasn’t for the Future Homes Standard, this blog wouldn’t exist. So what is it? This page offers a simplified explanation of FHS.

In one sentence, the Future Homes Standard is a UK Government policy that’s reshaping how we design new homes so they’re far more energy efficient, comfortable to live in, and constructed to a higher standard.

AI image shows a new brick house with solar panels in a cartoon style

Cast your minds back to Theresa May’s stint as PM. This was the first time the phrase ‘Future Homes Standard’ was mentioned in Parliament. It was just before she committed the UK to achieving net zero by 2050.

There was a lot of other stuff going on politically during her time in Number 10. Brexit was keeping all politicians busy as they worked out how to ‘take back control’ and untangle us from the EU. Also, investigations were ongoing in the aftermath of Grenfell, which went on to trigger sweeping reviews across Building Regulations and fire safety laws.

The Future Homes Standard policy (and its lesser-known sister-policy the Future Buildings Standard) were published in 2019 to improve the energy performance and construction quality of new-builds, and to set new standards for occupancy comfort.

With a six-year programme for implementation, FHS is more over-arching than the usual updates we see to Building Regulations.

Here are some of the key aims. The initial plan was to hit these adjectives by the end of 2025:

• Cut the carbon emissions caused by regulated energy use in new homes by at least 75%

• Ensure new homes are so well insulated that they’ll never need to be retrofitted

• Make our homes comfortable to live in by legislating for overheating risk and improved ventilation targets

• Ensuring new dwellings have low fuel bills

• Improve accountability for what’s being built, with all trades joined-up during construction

• Improve accuracy of modelling and reduce the performance gap.

Phase one of tackling these objectives happened in 2021, with substantial rewrites to Approved Documents Part F (ventilation) and Part L (fuel conservation), and the creation of Part O (overheating).

We’ll see Phase two take shape over the next nine months, with further updates to Part L, the launch of the Home Energy Model, and reform of the Energy Performance Certificate.

So six years on, has FHS delivered?

Let's unpick the above bulletpoints one by one...

1. Targets for energy and emissions are covered by Approved Document Part L.

The 2021 update set new, lower targets that effectively made developers choose between installing heat pumps or solar panels on every new home.

The next version of Part L will push targets even further, and are certain to exceed the 75% emission reduction by ending fossil fuel heating in new builds. Look out for future blogs when the final details are confirmed.

2. Part L also covers fabric performance.

The 2021 changes included a 15% uplift to the Target Fabric Energy Efficiency which meant housebuilders had to focus more on improving the fabric performance of all new houses.

It's not yet known if the 2025 updates will set even higher fabric standards, but it’s worth noting that laws in Scotland and Wales already set stricter insulation targets than what’s required in England.

3. The 2021 updates to Part F improved minimum standards for ventilation, especially concerning the renovation of older buildings.

There are now tighter controls to ensure retrofitted homes have sufficient air flow, after the leakage of old homes is improved.

And the introduction of overheating checks via Part O became mandatory on all new homes. Previously, it was down to local planning authorities to make sure dwellings could deal with heatwaves adequately, which tended to be a city-centric requirement.

Now, assessments are required across England with internal temperatures modelled to show the building design isn’t causing excessive heat build-up in liveable spaces. High temperatures are known to cause health issues and uncomfortable living conditions.

4. Aiming for low running costs is a tricky one, and all kinds of external factors since 2019 have meant that fuel bills have only gone up up up.

Expect to see new policies in the coming years to encourage fuel-bill saving technologies such as battery storage and community led energy projects.

5. Improving accountability has also been tackled by the Part L 2021 changes.

The introduction of photographic requirements and the standardised BREL compliance report now puts extra pressure on site managers to collect evidence that proves they are building what was designed.

(Note the Building Safety Act goes much further with accountability for high-rise development. That is a separate law to the Approved Documents).

6. And finally, how to improve the accuracy of modelling.

This is where the proposed changes will come into play, with the retirement of the SAP calculator and launch of the new Home Energy Model.

There is also talk of introducing a voluntary standard for post-construction monitoring to gather data that can compare results from the Home Energy Model with real-life energy use.

When the next wave of updates to Building Regulations are published later this year, that should bring the Future Homes Standard to its conclusion. But that doesn’t mean we’ve hit the end goal.

As it stands, Part L only considers a small fraction of the total carbon generated when a new development is built. Further updates will be needed to incorporate carbon lifecycle into the Approved Documents.

The Future Homes Standard has put some decent foundations in place, but we've still got a long way to go before the construction industry can claim to be building truly net zero homes.