Leading companies from the UK and abroad are building the first houses designed to demonstrate compliance to the new Code for Sustainable Homes, ready for unveiling at OFFSITE2007, 11-14 June at BRE Watford.

The Code, launched in April 2007, has been developed by Communities and Local Government (CLG) based on BRE’s EcoHomes method to enable a step change in sustainable building practice for new homes. It provides a means of assessing the sustainability credentials of new homes for energy, water, materials, waste, pollution and other issues.


Jaya Skandamoorthy, Director of BRE Enterprise & Innovation, said: “We are delighted that our industry partners are taking the lead responding to the Government challenge for low carbon and sustainable homes and building their demonstration houses on our Innovation Park for OFFSITE 2007.”

Companies such as Kingspan and Stewart Milne are ambitiously aiming to demonstrate how they would conform to the two top levels of the Code, Level 6 and Level 5 respectively. This means that both houses will have to be as near to ‘zero carbon’ as possible.

OFFSITE2007 also features four other houses from developers Hanson, Osborne, eco-TECH and Spaceover respectively which are all highly sustainable and affordable examples of mass produced housing. An exciting school of the future from Willmott Dixon’s consultancy arm Re-Thinking is also to be unveiled.

(CL)