Shakespeare would have been proud to have written this saga. The consultation on the 2025 Future Homes Standard is still before it’s final stage but an update from the Government today has shown our industry what we can expect from what we thought to be a ‘Major change to Building Regulations’. This major change is in fact nothing !

The industry has had its ears filled with stories and endured worries about what new minimum U-Values could be in 2025. Essential re-tooling and investment in lines needed? So many questions and after all this, it looks like there won’t be hardly any change at all. The whispered 0.8W/m²K is now proved to be a false flag

Yes there started to evidence of a watering down of requirement to 1.0 / 1.2 but not before the industry was hearing the “triple glazing standard’ sirens heralding in an expected drastic change to the industry which resulted in many companies hastily started reinventing their line setups with heavy investment and staff reorganisation plans, so that they would be able to comply with the expected triple glazed standards.

So from 0.8, 1.0 and 1.2W/m²K the Government now appears to be saying to our industry “carry on as you will, the changes would have been too expensive for the homeowner, so we shelve for now”.

What it all means

Basically, no change to the status quo, but we at Clayton believe that any investment in enhanced technologies that may or not have been invested in for readiness for the Triple Glazing standards are still of merit to the industry and to ourselves.

It is only through constant investment in cleaner production methods and reduced U Values in the end consumer unit, that we will all play our part in a greener earth for future generations. We all have our small part to play in this and even though Triple Glazing is now not a minimum expected standard, it is still part of a much needed overall push that the fenestration industry MUST engage in to make our industry and our products as energy efficient and as recyclable as possible.

From our personal view at Clayton, we have been ‘triple-ready’ for some time with investment in new technologies and processes, but we can see how this would make some fenestration companies give out a temporary sigh of relief.

We at Clayton have a strong core ethic of sustainability and although the whispered 0.8 is now proven to be, for now, moved years down the line, we have devised a double glazed unit that can offer a 0.9 U-value, which reduces energy costs for the end user and is also manufactured through reduced energy usage.

Clayton is a pioneering mover in the Industry who will constantly push towards greater thermal and energy efficiency in our units, and we have invested heavily in our green statement of “ Moving to a sustainable future, one sealed unit at a time”.