The Department for Communities and Local Government announced today its proposals for updating Part L of the Building Regulations.  Key points are as follows:

• The update will be delayed until 6 April 2014 (previously it was proposed for October 2013)
• The Government is further reducing the carbon targets; but the new targets are weaker than those proposed as part of the consultation exercise.  On average, there will be a 6% reduction for residential and a 9% reduction for non-residential (previously, the Government was leaning towards an 8% and a 20% target for residential and non-residential respectively).

Whilst the above therefore represents an additional regulatory compliance cost for developers, viewed in the context of the previous Part L Consultation, the proposals are a significant relaxation; probably due to the dampened macro-economic climate.

Nevertheless, the proposed adoption of revised carbon targets is a signal that the objective of “zero carbon” remains; however, the lessening of the ensuing target and postponement until 2014 suggests that the programme is likely to be impacted and achievement of “zero carbon” for residential by 2016 and for non-residential by 2019, looks increasing unlikely.

As a point of clarity, planning policy requirements remain in many parts of the UK and these operate independently of the Building Regulations.  Therefore whilst the update to the Regulations will raise the mandatory minimum level of performance; it does not necessarily affect local authority requirements which sometimes go above and beyond those of the Building Regulations.

Finally, it is worth highlighting that as a prudent measure – and only where feasible - developers should seek to register schemes against the current version of the Building Regulations to avoid any increase in build costs and impact on development value.