Vent-Axia welcomes Healthy Homes and Buildings White Paper

Vent-Axia is delighted to welcome the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for Healthy Homes and Buildings’ White Paper Building our Future: Laying the Foundations for Healthy Homes and Buildings. 

Published on 24 October, the White Paper makes clear recommendations to the Government on how it can improve standards in housing to benefit occupants’ health and wellbeing.

This follows on from the APPG’s green paper published last year which set out the political, economic and business case for healthy homes and buildings.

Contained are details of how, as a nation, healthy homes and buildings can and should be delivered, which fall under three overarching recommendations.

• The Government needs to establish a cross-departmental committee for health and buildings to champion change; recognising the interaction between buildings, health, education and the economy.
• To grow the research and evidence base to develop a clear case for further Government action to improve new build standards.
• To make renovation of current housing stock and infrastructure a Government priority and develop plans for retrofitting that takes a holistic approach to maximising health and wellbeing.

Within these recommendations to help overcome the problem of unhealthy homes, the White Paper calls for better and consistent building standards and regulations.

It also calls for both New Build building design and building renovations to consider health and wellbeing and take a holistic approach to consider elements such as ventilation, air quality, lighting and acoustics.

Jenny Smith, Marketing Manager at Vent-Axia (pictured), commented: “Ventilation is often overlooked when implementing energy efficiency measures in homes. This can have a detrimental effect on indoor air quality.

“Without good ventilation in a home air quality can potentially deteriorate and as a result can lead to condensation, mould and a build-up of toxic chemicals.

“We are therefore delighted that the White Paper calls for a national renovation strategy that takes a holistic approach to building renovation and that it recommends improved standards and regulations, which will improve installer best practice.”

A whopping 65% of UK homes suffer from poor indoor air quality (IAQ), due to inadequate ventilation.

This is having a significant detrimental impact on the health of people in their homes, with poor IAQ contributing towards many serious health problems such as asthma, lung cancer, strokes and cardiovascular disease.

The White Paper cites poor IAQ is reported to cost the UK more than 204,000 healthy life years, with 45% of those lost to cardiovascular diseases, 23% to asthma and allergy and 15% to lung cancer.

The Royal College of Physicians warned in 2016 that indoor air pollutants cause at a minimum, thousands of deaths per year and are associated with healthcare costs in the order of ‘tens of millions of pounds’.

The publication of the White Paper comes soon after DEFRA’s new Clean Air Strategy consultation, published on 22 May, which confirmed the importance of clean air in the home.

This draft strategy outlines the Government’s ambitions to lower air pollution, making our air healthier to breathe, protecting nature and boosting the economy, with the draft setting a clear direction for future air quality policies and goals.

The consultation closed in August and the final UK Clean Air Strategy and detailed National Air Pollution Control Programme is to be published by March next year.

To help protect health in the home, Vent-Axia has been working hard to provide ventilation solutions to improve IAQ for households.

Designed to work with the natural air infiltration, continuous ventilation systems control the air path through the home, preventing the migration of damaging humidity and pollutants, such as VOCs.

For new builds, Vent-Axia’s Sentinel Kinetic mechanical ventilation with heat recovery (MVHR) system boasts an impressive 94% thermal efficiency. For private refurbishments, Vent-Axia’s Lo-Carbon Svara offers quiet, disturbance-free running helping ensure good indoor air quality and comfort.

Meanwhile, the Lo-Carbon Revive and the new PoziDry ProTM PIV unit has been designed specifically with social housing in mind offering an effective continuous ventilation solution for residents.