HCA Chief Defends Code for Sustainable Homes 'Waivers'

Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) chief executive Pat Ritchie has defended recent criticism aimed at the organisation for allowing social housing developers to ignore national eco-standards for Government-funded homes. It's been reported that up to a third of schemes which received government grant between 2008/11 were granted 'waivers' freeing them from meeting code level three of the Code for Sustainable Homes. She said the criticism was unfounded, "It was basically unfounded because it failed to understand the difference between a genuine waiver and schemes which were never meant to meet Code Level 3 in the first place. We’ve issued just 14 genuine waivers in the whole of 2010/11 out of literally thousands of schemes. So we feel quite strongly that our delivery partners should be congratulated for taking their environmental responsibilities seriously rather than criticised for not doing something they were never meant to do in the first place.” Read more on 24dash.