News

Last week a chap from Withycombe Raleigh asked us, over a cuppa and a half-dug trench, whether the new energy rules would catch his rear extension before he’d even got planning. Fair question. The headlines have been loud, and if you’re hunting for builders in Exmouth, you don’t want to find out halfway through that the goalposts moved.

Short version: the Future Homes Standard was published on 24 March 2026 and comes into force a year later, on 24 March 2027, with a 12-month transitional period for schemes already in the system. It’s mainly aimed at new homes. For the people we’re building for, that means plots and self-builds around Woodbury and Lympstone, rather than a kitchen extension off the back of a 1930s semi in Littleham.

What does it change on a new build? Gas boilers are effectively out, replaced by a heat pump, with solar PV on the roof and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery. Airtightness gets pushed to 4 m³/m²/hr at 50 Pa, which is a long way tighter than the 8 you can just about scrape through on today. And that’s down to how well the block and beam floor meets the wall plate, how the breather membrane is lapped, and whether the sparky has sealed round every downlight.

For an extension to an existing house, you’re still looking at Part L as it stands today, plus the usual Building Control checks: trench-fill foundations to the depth the inspector wants, wall ties at the right centres, DPC at least 150mm above ground, and decent PIR board such as Kingspan or Celotex in the cavity. Spend the extra on insulation now. It’s cheap beside heating a cold room for thirty years.

If you’re weighing up a new build or an extension in Exmouth or East Devon, call S and P Builders on 07971 069490 or visit sandpbuildingcontractors.com. We’ll talk through what will and won’t be affected, in plain English, and give you a price you can actually work with.

A couple in Lympstone rang us last week wanting a rear extension quote for spring, and were surprised to hear we’re already booking into March. It isn’t just us. New procurement guidance published this month by the climate charity Ashden, working with Efficiency North and the National Retrofit Hub, points to an estimated 140,000 construction vacancies reported across the UK in 2025 — with shortages hitting insulation specialists, retrofit assessors, heat pump installers and general multi-trade workers hardest. Around a third of the current workforce is also expected to retire within the next decade.

For homeowners in Exmouth, Budleigh Salterton and further round towards Woodbury, that shortage is starting to show up as longer lead times and, in some cases, a real drop in the standard of finish from firms taking on more than their trained crews can manage properly. It’s worth asking any builder who’s actually on site day to day, and whether the trades doing your first fix and insulation are employed or subbed out to whoever’s free that week.

It matters more than people think on an extension or loft conversion, because the fabric performance depends on it. A trench-fill foundation poured to the wrong depth, or a cavity left without proper wall ties and Celotex board fitted to hit current Part L insulation values, causes problems that don’t show up until the first cold winter — cold bridging, condensation, cracked plaster.

We’ve kept the same core team of bricklayers and carpenters at S and P for years rather than relying on agency labour, which is part of why we can still give a straight answer on timescales. If you’re thinking about a home extension, loft conversion or renovation anywhere around Exmouth and East Devon, get in touch through sandpbuildingcontractors.com or give us a call — we’ll tell you honestly what the diary looks like.