Roundtable summit will bring all industry players and stakeholders together for first time.
Britain’s home building industry is coming together today with Yvette Cooper MP, Minister of Housing and Planning, and key stakeholders to start working out how to deliver the Government’s target of building all new homes to zero carbon performance standards within ten years.
The Home Builders Federation is convening a roundtable summit with Government officials and representatives of home building companies, suppliers, utility companies, regulators, local Government and environmental groups to start collectively determining the opportunities and potential barriers to achieving the Government’s targets. It marks the most concerted and ambitious attempt by the home building industry to deliver higher environmental standards.
Stewart Baseley, Executive Chairman of the Home Builders Federation, says: “The home building industry broadly welcomes the Government’s environmental targets. However, home builders cannot achieve them alone. This roundtable summit aims to bring all the parties together and, rolling up our sleeves, begin the crucial task of working out the detail so that we can achieve higher environmental standards and at the same time deliver the step-change in housing output that the country so badly needs.”
Yvette Cooper MP, Minister for Housing and Planning says: "Every sector of the economy needs to do its bit to help cut carbon emissions and I welcome the commitment of the Home Builders Federation to delivering much higher environmental standards in the future. We know it will be a challenge for all new homes to be zero carbon within 10 years but we think the industry can rise to it.
"It's important that the Government, house builders, utilities and local councils all work together to deliver the changes we need. And improving the energy efficiency of our homes will help cut people's fuel bills as well as cutting carbon emissions."
On Wednesday 6 December, the Chancellor announced in his pre-Budget statement that "it is time to set a long-term framework for curbing emissions from houses, which are 30% of all emissions… Within ten years every new home will be a zero carbon home and we will be the first country ever to make this commitment.”
A week later, the Rt Hon Ruth Kelly MP, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, announced a consultation on a challenging package of proposed measures to ensure that all new homes will be carbon zero by 2016.
Notes for Editors
1) The Home Builders Federation (HBF) is the principal trade federation for private sector home builders and voice of the home building industry in England and Wales. The HBF's 300 member firms account for over 80% of all new homes built in England and Wales in any one year, and include companies of all sizes, ranging from multi-national, household names through regionally based businesses to small local companies: www.hbf.co.uk
2) The HBF Roundtable Summit: “Zero-carbon homes - delivering the agenda” is taking place at 11.00 on Tuesday 9 January at 1 Great George Street in central London.
3) The Government’s consultation document, Building a greener future, can be found Here
3) The extent of Britain's housing undersupply:
The rate of household formation is set to increase by 23% over the next twenty years. If housing supply remains at 2005 levels, there will be a shortage of 50,000 homes each year across England (ODPM statistical release, household projection figures, 14 March 2006)
Accessibility to the housing ladder is 300% worse in 2006 than in 1996 (RICS Accessibility Index, 24 August 2006).
More than a third of all working households under 40 cannot now afford to buy a home even at the low end of the housing market. In the South of England, the situation is even worse, with half of all working households under 40 in this position (Joseph Rowntree Foundation research, 21 September 2006)
Seven out of ten of today's ten year olds will not be able to afford to buy their own homes if current rates of homebuilding are continued (ODPM figures, 10 October 2005)
For media information, please contact:
Toby Orr
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07736 175311