Part L: Can SAP reports be made simpler?

In this series of articles, we aim to answer some of your questions about the upcoming changes to Approved Documents L and F, SAP methodology and the Future Homes Standard.

Current proposals suggest these regulations will be coming into force in England from October 2020. Contact us with your own questions about the regulation changes, or to discuss our training seminars and workshops.

Can SAP reports be made simpler to understand?

That’s the plan – the Future Homes Standard proposals include the creation of a new, simple-to-read compliance report which will be used by all SAP assessment companies.

One of our key client commitments at Energist is to keep things simple. This can be challenging when we’re working with such complicated topics, but we like to think we’re good at explaining what we do.

We know simplicity isn’t consistent across the industry, and some assessment reports can be confusing to understand. Quite often an untrained eye isn’t sure whether it’s looking at documents that prove compliance with Building Regulations or not.

The Future Homes Standard is proposing a new-look compliance report to make things clearer. More crucially, it will be used universally throughout the industry which means you’ll get a similar looking  report regardless of which assessment company you buy your SAPs from.

For those who have used Energist’s SAP service before, you may be familiar with our very own Developer Statement. This summary document confirms the key information that has been used in the SAP models. We ask developers to review and confirm the accuracy of this Statement before we issue any As Built documentation.

Known as BREL (Building Regulations England Part L) the new report looks like a merger between our Developer Statement and the current SAP Compliance report.

BREL shows how the building compares against required Part L targets, lists construction U-Values and materials, confirms thermal bridging psi-values and also summarises the air permeability score, heating and hot water details and controls, ventilation, lighting, shower types and whether any renewable technology has been used.

The document uses green text to show all is well, or red text where a dwelling doesn’t comply, or where certain evidence is missing.

By creating this standardised document, developers will no longer have to battle through unclear Building Regulation information to check whether their SAP models are correct or not.

We see the introduction of this standardised compliance report as a positive step; especially as we’re entering a stage where SAP models are becoming more complicated and As Built evidence gathering is set to become more detailed.

More details about this easy to read SAP report are expected in the Spring when the Government is due to publish more details about the new Part L.

We’ll continue to provide you with our Developer Statement summary in the meantime.