Future Homes Standard Lands in March 2027 — Does It Touch Your Exmouth Build?

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.