Code for Sustainable Homes

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The Code for Sustainable Homes provides a comprehensive measure of the sustainability of new homes, ensuring that sustainable homes deliver real improvements in key areas such as carbon dioxide emissions and water use. The government’s ambition for the Code is that it becomes the single national standard for the design and construction of sustainable homes, and that it drives improvements in home building practice. This has been shown with the aligning of a number of parts of the code with the updated building regulations, including emissions, water use, site waste management and requirements for surface water management.

Code For Sustainable Homes Assessment

Code Assessments. Code assessments are carried out in three stages:

Registering a Site. A site is registered by the code assessor allowing 5 years for the submission of the Design Stage (DS) assessment from the date of the next code update – this ensures that the goal posts do not change during the dwelling’s design. There is currently no time limit between the submission of the DS assessment and the completion of the Post Construction Stage (PCS)
Design Stage (DS) assessment, leading to an interim certificate. At this stage evidence is collated and used by the assessor to determine how many credits are to be awarded for each issue. A summary report is submitted to the BRE for QA checks and certification.
Post Construction Stage (PCS) assessment, leading to a Final Code Certificate. This stage insures that the evidence collated at the DS or any changes since comply with the code criteria. Again a report is submitted to the BRE for QA checks and certification.

For a more complete explanation of the assessment process and the types of evidence required it is worth reviewing chapter 3 of the Code technical guide available from the Communities and Local Government website (http://www.communities.gov.uk/planningandbuilding/sustainability/codesustainablehomes/)

There a nine categories to the Code For Sustainable Homes.

Category 1 – Energy/CO₂