Conservatives plan to revise building regs

The Tory party will revise and simplify building regulations if elected, the party said today.

The Tories made the pledge at the bottom of the planning green paper, published today.

The green paper said: "Under Labour, we believe that building regulations have become unnecessarily prescriptive and overly complex.

"They need to be simplified and reduced, with a focus on outcomes (e.g. public safety, energy efficiency) rather than box-ticking.”

The paper also said that regulations should be “proportionate to risk.” It is not yet clear what that would mean for existing building regulation parts, whether all would be retained in a reduced form, or whether some elements would be scrapped entirely.

Housing minister Grant Shapps has previously said that, if elected, the Tories would finalise the definition of zero carbon “within weeks” of coming to power.