Parliament has been told changes to Part L of the building regulations will be enforced from 6 April 2014, not this October as originally planned.
The announcement comes more than a year after the consultation on Part L closed.
In a written statement Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Baroness Hanham, announced the April date, which she said gives the industry time to prepare for the changes.
Baroness Hanham said the changes to Part L will mean new homes and non-domestic buildings will have to include more efficient lighting. She announced "a strengthening of the minimum energy efficiency standards when specific building services work including air conditioning and lighting replacements are carried out in existing non-domestic buildings."
A spokeswoman for the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) said the measures had to be announced today in parliament because it was the last day that the House of Lords is sitting. However, changes to Part L and an impact assessment will not be formally published until next week. As a result, the lighting industry will have to wait until then to hear whether the government will introduce the lighting energy numerical indicator benchmark, known as LENI ?in the amendments.
Lighting magazine's campaign for LENI has echoed calls from industry bodies such as the SLL, IALD, PLDA and LIA for the government to introduce the new energy efficiency metric as an alternative to minimum luminaire lumens per circuit watt. You can read about Lighting's campaign for LENI's inclusion in Part L here.
New build homes will have to be 6 per cent more efficient than under current regulations. The changes will also see an uplift in efficiency standards of 9 per cent for non-domestic buildings - a significant reduction on the 20 per cent improvement proposed in the consultation, which closed in April last year.
