Responding to the Chancellor’s announcement that within 10 years every new home will be a zero carbon home, HBF Executive Chairman Stewart Baseley says:
Home builders want to help people cut their carbon emissions. In principle we welcome the setting of a timetable for all new homes to be zero carbon. We hope that ten years is the right timeframe. The challenge is to ensure that consumer behaviour adapts to zero carbon living, that all homebuilding companies have the right capacity, and that the Government sticks to its existing housing supply targets
“The stamp duty exemption could provide the impetus to help home builders respond to changing consumer demands. We hope that this incentive will not be too short-lived.”
The HBF has been leading work to define what a zero-carbon home is and to understand better the challenges to consumers, industry and the Government. At the Housebuilding 06 conference Stewart Baseley set out his vision of the framework needed (see footnote 2). Stewart Baseley and Yvette Cooper will also co-chair a stakeholder summit in the New Year.
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Notes for Editors
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
In his speech to the Housebuilding 06 conference on 10 October, Stewart Baseley said the following on the low-carbon framework:
“So where do we go? What do we do?
“I have a personal vision - a radical vision - of how we can and should do it.
“Yvette Cooper has set down a ten-year marker. While I do not know whether that is achievable as yet, I have no problem with the principle.
“But if we are to deliver, we need a policy framework, set out by the Government in consultation with the house building industry, that spells out exactly where the industry should be at the end of that period.
“It must also be a wide, holistic framework, encompassing all stakeholders, from the National Housing Federation to the National Grid.
“This policy framework, I believe, requires three critical elements:
“Firstly, we need to know precisely what needs to be achieved. Are we measuring energy efficiency or are we assessing the carbon footprint of new homes? We all need to be on the same page, signed up to the same targets.
“And the targets need to be expressed as clearly and simply as possible – so that industry and consumers can understand them and so that we can find the best means of delivering them in partnership with the supply chain, energy providers and our customers.
“In proposing this approach, I also make a straightforward appeal to all political parties: be wary of allowing a free-for-all of target-making, of letting every local authority devise its own policies to save the planet. There are well over 350 local authorities in England and Wales. Our capacity to deliver increased output and real quality improvements will be seriously undermined if we have to conform to a multitude of targets and policies.
“Secondly, once the framework has been agreed, its success will rest on the ability of the Government to step back and allow the industry to do what it does best – change, adapt and innovate.
“The Government can monitor progress, and call us to regular account through interim targets, but it has to agree not to tinker, not to interfere, not to intervene, and not to shift the goal posts. It is also critical that public policy avoids any temptation to pick technology or product winners.
“Above all, this will allow certainty and predictability to guide the decisions made in the board rooms of home building companies and their suppliers throughout the country.
“This, more than anything else, will transform the industry’s relationship with Government. If certainty and predictability are the watchwords of the new framework, then trust will soon follow. We will have a real partnership with Government.
“Thirdly, of course, our customers need to be with us.
“Changes and innovations need to be practical and desirable. While we know that consumer opinions are steadily shifting, we must retain the same customer focus that has been delivering high customer satisfaction levels in our recent HBF / NHBC survey.
“We can, of course, work with the Government to help lead customer opinion, but we daren’t run against it.”
For media information, please contact:
Paul Boulter
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paul.boulter@portlandpr.co.uk