Code for Sustainable Homes Assessments and Consultancy

The Code for Sustainable Homes provides a performance rating against various criteria and has been designed to enable a step change in sustainable building practice for new homes. It has been a voluntary standard in England since April 2007 and Government intends to make it mandatory to have a rating from April 2008.
If a property attains Code Level 1, this means that performance is above that required as minimum by the Building Regulations. The maximum level is Code Level 6 and this includes a requirement for the home to be “zero carbon”, i.e. having zero net emissions of carbon throughout the year – so any imported power must be replaced by exporting power generated from domestic renewables at another time.

The design categories included within the Code are:
• Energy/CO2 • Water • Minerals • Surface water run-off

• Waste • Pollution • Health and well being • Management • Ecology

The Code introduces minimum standards for energy and water efficiency for every level. There are minimum standards for materials, surface water run-off and waste at entry level only. Additional points can still be gained by performance in other areas.
An assessment against the Code is not mandatory for every new home, but a rating will be required for all new dwellings (with a zero rating being allocated if there is no assessment). For some developments, including individual dwellings, developers may not wish to build above Building Regulations and this is ok. They would not necessarily want to pay for an assessment to tell them that they had not exceeded Building Regulations. In this case, the developer must download a “zero-star certificate”. So either an assessment or a “zero star certificate” will be required for all new dwellings and these must be included in the Home Information Pack (HIP). The certificates can be downloaded from the HIP website.