BEAMA’s position paper urges the Government to broaden the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) remit to recognise and assess the indoor air quality (IAQ) of homes.
The paper, titled ‘Reforming Energy Performance Certificates for Indoor Air Quality’, outlines a simple example of how the assessment can work to improve IAQ in our homes.
Poor quality housing in the UK costs the NHS approximately £1.4bn annually due to illnesses stemming from substandard living conditions including poor indoor air quality due to inadequate ventilation. Around 10% of UK residents live in inadequate housing, with issues like dampness, mould and insufficient heating contributing to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, mental health problems and increased mortality.
Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) currently focus on energy efficiency, neglecting the health impacts of ventilation and air quality. BEAMA proposes integrating IAQ assessments into the EPC framework. With over 450,000 EPCs lodged in England and Wales in the first quarter of 2023, this presents a significant opportunity to make a simple assessment of a home’s ventilation performance when undergoing an EPC.
“At Vent-Axia we support BEAMA’s position statement on EPCs since we are committed to improving IAQ for the nation. Expanding EPCs to cover IAQ assessment is a common-sense approach to what is a national health crisis, with lung diseases responsible for one in eight emergency hospital admissions in England last year. Now is the right time to enforce the principle that a healthy home is a basic human right,” said Joseph Brawn, product and marketing director at Vent-Axia.
The Building Regulations do address ventilation in homes in Approved Document Part F, Vol 1: “There shall be adequate means of ventilation provided for people in a building”. However, BEAMA questions at what point is ventilation assessed to ensure this is achieved without a link to a transactional opportunity.
BEAMA’s position paper explains that expanding the EPC framework to incorporate IAQ assessments and reported outcomes can be achieved by a very simple yet informative checklist, accompanied by minimum training and data capture with the Home Energy Model EPC Wrapper. BEAMA recommends a simple IAQ evaluation within the EPC process with mechanical ventilation system checks. This assessment would use existing ventilation guidelines (Approved Document F) and be integrated into sale and rental evaluations to help improve IAQ in our homes.
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