Building Regulations — Part L

Lecture by Ant Wilson to an FDAL seminar on the background to the 2013 changes to Part L of the Building Regulations, and what they will mean.

The Seminar was held in FDAL's office on 29 September 2011 and was presented by Ant Wilson, from AEComm, one of the Country's foremost and most respected buildings services engineers with a reputation for promoting low carbon techniques.

Part L of the building Regulations relates to the thermal efficiency of buildings. The regulations have already developed considerably since first issued and further changes are required to accommodate the latest European Union requirements and to keep the government's carbon reduction targets on course. This will affect all those in the construction and building services industries. We were privileged to hear Ant Wilson explain the background to all this and the changes that will impact upon all those involved.

The requirements for adequate thermal insulation go back over half a century and were originally accommodated within local authority building byelaws. To obtain consistency, the requirements were later brought within the national building regulations, made initially under the Public Health Act 1961 and later enlarged in scope by the Building Act 1984. The latest issue of the regulations was in 2010 and Part L sets out the current requirements for thermal efficiency, supported by a number of ‘Approved Documents’, which Ant was keen to remind us is purely ‘guidance’; only compliance with the regulations is compulsory. The present documentation supersedes a previous set, dating back to 2006, which implemented the requirements of EU Directive 2002/91/EC relating to the energy performance of buildings.

The present government policy is to ‘support a green economy’ and to achieve challenging carbon reduction targets (80 per reduction by 2050 compared with 1990 values). However the policy has to be balanced against a number of practical and other issues and one thrust of the forthcoming requirements is to reduce the whole life costs of buildings (balancing added construction costs with lower running costs). There are some problems here as outcomes do not necessarily reflect predictions. Ant gave us several examples where sticking to the letter of the present regulations had actually increased energy consumption.

Buildings are responsible for a great deal of carbon usage and improving building performance is key to meeting targets, 2016 had already been established as a target for requiring near zero carbon homes and interim stages had been agreed already of improvements for new domestic premises of 25% in 2010 and 44% in 2013 and a notional 100% from 2016 compared with 2007 figures. For the 2013 regulations a trajectory will be set for new non domestic premises of near zero carbon buildings from 2019.

There are huge transitional issues and various as yet unresolved questions relating to existing buildings and modifications thereto. These challenges are likely to affect many in the industry and pose some interesting issues for those in the rail sector, depots being referred to by several in the audience as being a real issue.

The thrust of the 2013 regulations will be to apply a raft of new or stricter requirements relating to the design of and materials used in new buildings. Ant talked us through a number of these and we were able to discuss the implications. There were particular issues around how the performance of a building could be measured as estimates for total building performance have to be made before construction starts, to provide confidence that a building will comply. The new regulations will also take into account the latest tranche of EU regulation (Directive 2010/31/EU) and other inputs that require a number of methodologies to be changed.

The seminar raised a number of issues that the audience wanted to discuss with Ant and the ramifications of the zero carbon requirements for anyone involved with a substantial building estate were found to be of great relevance and interest. After the seminar the discussion continued over wine and nibbles and those attending thought the seminar most useful.