Part L revamp on the cards

Part L of the Building Regulations was amended in April 2006 to encourage low energy design such as naturally ventilated buildings to improve the energy performance of buildings to tackle climate change.

Rather than promote the construction of low energy buildings, the recent changes to Part L2A have backfired. A senior civil servant said there had been “an unexpected race to air-conditioning in non-domestic buildings” following the recent revisions to Part L2A.

The official added that because of the number of air-conditioning schemes submitted for planning permission “further revisions to Part L may well be required”.

Terry Dix, a director of Arup, said the government had been warned before their introduction that the changes to Part L would lead to a move from naturally

ventilated buildings to air-conditioned buildings: “The industry raised this issue with the ODPM [now DCLG] that this would be the case”.

The problem is because natural ventilated buildings are already designed to be low energy and so it is difficult achieve further energy savings to achieve compliance with the Building Regulations.

The requirement in Part L to demonstrate that an occupied space without air-conditioning will not overheat is also considered to have contributed to the race for air-conditioning.

This year’s hot summer is also considered to have exacerbated developers’ requirement for air-conditioning.