Finally, the *censored*-up (or conspiracy, not sure which) over Part F of the Building Regulations is over. Originally, the requirement in the revised Approved Document (AD) F published in April was for all replacement windows to have trickle vents fitted even if the windows being removed did not have them. The reason for this change is not known. Just who it was that felt that this was a practical and useful idea is not known. Nor was anyone I know in the industry consulted over this proposal.

The requirement when any new legislation is introduced or existing regulation changed is for the draft changes themselves and a Regulatory Impact Assessment (RIA) to be circulated for comment. The RIA is designed to ensure that the benefits from any legislative action are greater than the costs. I don’t know if such an RIA was made but I certainly never saw it and neither did anybody else that I know that I’m aware of.

There were howls of anger when the AD was published with this requirement in. Back of a fag packet calculations suggested an additional cost to industry of £105 million per annum. £105 million! This is based on an average price of £20 per vent (determined from an admittedly small straw poll of around 10 installation companies) and the number of replacement windows installed per year. Just how much benefit would the public get for their money? And, of course, there was the fabled comment in the AD that “trickle vents are normally left open in habitable rooms”. Utter nonsense in my experience. Most are never used and many are stuffed with paper or taped over.

Representations were made to government who commissioned an (another?) RIA which itself was utter nonsense. Firstly, they compared the marginal cost to a fabricator (cost of vent = £1.80; cost of slot £2 and so on) with the benefit to the consumer (number of asthmatic attack deaths reduced by 2.5, etc.) This is fundamentally flawed thinking. Cost benefit analyses must be at the same point in the process. The benefit to the consumer must be compared to the cost to the consumer. Not rocket science, is it?

Consultations with the general public a few years ago to put a cash price on human life came up with a wide range of values which ranged from around £0.5m to £1.5m. The government settled on a round £1m which has been upgrade in line with inflation to slightly over £1.4m today. They also took into account reduced mould growth to walls and eventually came up with figures that showed even using their unrealistic costs per vent, and assuming that all the trickle vents were used properly, the benefits were insufficient to justify the changes. Had they been sensible and compared costs to the consumer (equal to cost to the manufacturer, overheads, warehousing, profit [hah!] and VAT) with benefits to the consumer, and had they taken a realistic view of how few trickle vents would be used correctly, then the disparity would have been massive.

Even then, government prevaricated. This was raised immediately after publication of AD F but it was not until the back end of September before ministers relented and did a U turn. But not before a few hundred thousand windows that had been made with trickle vents during late August and September for installation after 1st October when the new requirements were to come into effect. Only £10m quid’s worth or so, so that’s all right.

The statement read as follows :

Ministers have fully considered the evidence, and decided to:

1. withdraw the guidance in Approved Document F recommending fitting trickle ventilators in all replacement windows from 1 October.

2. accept the GGF's offer to produce good practice guidance. This guidance should reflect an industry view and take account of views from both window fabricators, ventilator suppliers and DCLG. It should be in place as soon as possible.

This statement is itself somewhat disingenuous. The use of trickle ventilators is not “recommended” in AD F; the Approved Document states that “…unless the room is adequately ventilated by other installed ventilation provisions, replacement windows should include trickle ventilators preferably with accessible controls…” . This more than a recommendation, I think. The accessible controls bit means that all ventilators fitted above 1.7m from the floor, i.e. just about, should be rod or cord operated as well!

In other words, Government still think trickle vents are a good thing to have but are downgrading them to guidance rather than requirements. By the time you read this, these guidance document should have been completed and published.

But how did we get to this stage? How come none of us saw these proposals before they came into effect? It is not as if government does not consult us. We had many meetings with the Building Regulations Advisory Committee Working Group on Conservatories when Government we considering bringing conservatories under 30m2 under Building Regulations control. We were meeting as an industry almost weekly to draft a comprehensive guidance document that would assist conservatory installers comply with regulations in the event the Government’s wishes came into being. At the same time we argued the case against on the basis of an RIA. There were some very dodgy statistics being bandied around which appeared to show that each conservatory was the cause of 2.4 complaints referred to trading standards officers but as these were extrapolated from figures produced by the Office for National Statistics, there was little we could do about them. So we concentrated on demonstrating the costs that industry would incur going the Building Regulations Approval route. This battle we won. There are now no plans to bring conservatories under Building Regulations control. You may think this is a bad decision, some do, but it was taken after detailed consultation with industry and a proper assessment of the costs and benefits.

So why didn’t this happen with AD F? I have no answer and just hope that this has caused such a fuss that it won’t happen again. Certainly those of involved in this side of the industry are more vigilant. But sometimes vigilance is not enough.

When Part L of the Building Regulations was changed back in 2002, there was an overarching requirement that replacement windows must not make the building any less compliant with respect to any other parts of the Building Regulations. This caused some concern over fire egress, and for some years we had an interpretation that as long as you kept mullion positions the same and used egress hinges where necessary (usually where butt hinges on timber windows were the ones coming out) then there was no problem with the subsequent reduction of the actual size of the opening due to larger sections and modern hardware. We bumbled along in this way for a few years and nobody complained until Government declared this interpretation wrong after it was raised by one Building Control Officer (we could not find the written evidence that a Government official had said this, unfortunately) and we should not be reducing the size of the clear opening. If this means the moving of mullions away from the centre of a window to give a lopsided appearance, so be it. How you cope with, say, removing a small steel window with no mullions or transoms has not been satisfactorily explained. Increase the size of the structural opening? Even when an existing window is not an egress window, or is so small it could not permit egress, officially we should not be making it even more of a non-egress window. The impracticality of these requirements has been explained to Government and we are still waiting for their response.

How do we stop future ill thought out legislation? We can keep checking the new web site for this. To get to the bit on Building Regulations is not that easy. Eventually you end up at http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/ where information is available. But we shouldn’t have to. It is obvious that industry should be consulted during the process, and indeed in most other aspects we are. I think the strong reaction from industry should make the Government more aware of its responsibilities in the future as I’m sure they would not like to be embarrassed into making another U turn.

Of course, this doesn’t end here. The vent manufacturers have tooled up to increase production by several million units a year after the original AD F was published early in the year. How much of their investment is going to be wasted as the millions of extra vent sales they legitimately expected fail to materialise? There is talk of legal action from some manufacturers. Who knows, heads may even roll.

Paul Jervis

30th October 2006