Housebuilders to be rewarded for going green in the Gateway

Housebuilders that can build the greenest homes for the least money will be rewarded by the government with contracts for thousands of homes under plans being considered by the Housing Corporation.

The corporation has commissioned a study from DCLG-adviser Dr Tim Williams into how housebuilders in the Thames Gateway could be persuaded to build greener homes. It will be published in March.

Regenerate can also reveal that a report by English Partnerships, to be published next month, will say that zero-carbon homes could be built for as little as an extra £2,000 per home – at present it is estimated to cost as much as £32,000 to meet the Code for Sustainable Homes [See table, The cost of going green].

In December last year communities secretary Ruth Kelly set a target for all new homes to be carbon-neutral by 2016 and the Williams study is intended to pave the way to meeting this target. Steve Douglas, deputy chief executive at the Housing Corporation, said: “We are looking at piloting a greener housebuilding approach in the Thames Gateway. The aspiration is to go way beyond what we are expecting in other parts of our investment programme.”

Douglas added that the research would suggest that the corporation run a competition in the Gateway to pit housebuilders against each other to see who could build the greenest housing. This would be separate to the “carbon challenge” launched by Kelly and EP earlier this month.

The corporation requires that homes built using its £3.9bn two-yearly budget at least attain three-stars when assessed under the new Code for Sustainable Buildings. Douglas said that the aim of the pilot – which would be run as part of the next Housing Corporation investment programme in 2008-2010 – would be to build homes that “are as green as possible: it has got to be more than three stars”.

The corporation expects to fund between 3,000 and 5,000 homes in the Gateway in the next two years, all of which could be up for competition. Overall there will be an additional 160,000-200,000 homes in the Gateway by 2016 with 30-40% of these funded by the corporation.

The aim is to do carbon-neutral housing before 2016 – why not if we’ve got the technology?

Steve Douglas, Housing Corporation

If the pilot works, then Douglas said the corporation would look to roll it our across the whole of the England. “We want to accelerate the speed at which we get to carbon neutrality,” he added. “The aspiration is to do carbon-neutral housing before 2016 – why not if we’ve got the technology and the willpower?”

Ivan Ball, director of sustainability consultant Bluesky which advises a number of large housebuilders on green housing, said: “If the Housing Corporation changes the requirements to get this money, then housebuilders will meet them – it’s as simple as that.”

Ball said that although the demand for greener housing was not there from the public at the moment, that would change. “I do think that eventually you will get housebuilders fighting each other to build the greenest house.”

This is definitely the contention of Dan Epstein, environmental policy manager at EP. He commissioned cost consultant Cyril Sweett to produce a study of how much extra above the current building regulations it would cost housebuilders to construct three-star to five-star homes under the Code for Sustainable Buildings.

The study did not look at six-star zero-carbon homes as the government has yet to specify whether these include internal appliances or not. However Epstein said that on an EP scheme in Milton Keynes which will rely on a 2.4 megawatt wind turbine for electricity, it was going to be possible to produce zero-carbon homes for as little as £2,000 more than is required to meet the building regulations.

“We are finding that the costs of ‘greening housing’ are not as high as we imagined,” he said. “This is because competition drives these costs down and also because most developers have already invested in building homes that are substantially higher than what is required by the building regulations.”