9. Summary and Conclusion

125. Table 4 contains a summary of the costs and benefits for each of the Requirements under current conditions.

Table 4:	Summary of costs and benefits of new requirements in Part E.
		Unit cost	Annual national cost		Benefits
Requirement E1(a)					Qualitative benefits (examples only) Improves sound insulation (particularly at low frequencies). Improves acoustic quality. Affects wider range of domestic buildings. Improves compliance with required standards. Reduces complaints about neighbour noise. Improves privacy within dwellings. Reduces annoyance and sleep disturbance. Creates level playing field for developers. More socially equitable, Better aligned with current Government housing policy and Strategy for Sustainable Construction. Quantitative benefits Reduces proportion of occupants rating sound insulation as poor or very poor and increases proportion rating insulation as good or very good (see Tables 2 and 3) Currently 25% of new walls and up to 40% of new floors are estimated not to meet current standards - these proposals should reduce the failure rate to below 5% over 10 years. Valuation of benefits Speculative estimates ranging from £24M to about £240M have been presented but these must be applied with care.
Walls		£0 (flat) - £100 (semi-detached)	£5.5	million
Separating floors		£1,500 (range: £500 to £3,000)	£27.1	million
Material change of use (dwellings)		£130	£3.4	million
Rooms for residential purposes		-	£1.8	million
Subtotal E1(a)		-	£37.8	million
Requirement E1(b) Pre-completion testing regime
Attached dwelling houses		£260	£3.6	million
Flats (walls & floors)		£840	£2.4	million
Flats (floors only)		£670	£0.6	million
Additional costs		-	£0.5	million
Subtotal E1(b)		-	£7.1	million
Requirement E2(a)		Walls: £5-£8	£1.0	million
Requirement E2(b)		Floors: £170 to £300	£27.6	million
Requirement E3
Flats		£350 per flat	£8.1	million
Rooms for residential purposes		-	£0.4	million
Subtotal E3		-	£8.5	million
Requirement E4		-	Cost-neutral
TOTAL COST E1 - E4		-	£82.0	million

Note:

In order to derive these figures it has been necessary to estimate the annual build rate of different house types using DTI construction statistics and NHBC data. These data shows that in England and Wales there are about 160,000 dwellings built per year, which includes 80,000 detached dwellings and a comparable number of attached dwellings (e.g. semi-detached, terraced, flats and maisonettes).

b. Requirement E1 only applies to attached dwellings and rooms for residential purposes. The requirement for separating floors within E1 only applies to flats and maisonettes. Detached dwellings are only affected by E2.

126. It has been argued that Option 1 'Do nothing' would do nothing to stem the rising trend in reported noise problems and would mean that the situation would probably deteriorate. Option 2 'Promote good practice' would be a development of the current approach, but the current approach has been shown not to be entirely successful. Option 2 would deliver benefits but these are likely to be socially inequitable. When this 'promote good practice' approach is coupled with probable poor take up and associated enforcement problems it is considered to be unsustainable.

127. It is clear that there is dissatisfaction with the current sound insulation performance in new dwellings and conversions, with particular problems arising from the transmission of low frequency sounds, such as the bass beat from music. Improvements in living standards and changes in social attitudes and lifestyles appear to be associated with an increase in complaints about noise. Social surveys and field measurements indicate that the problem is due both to current implicit target values being set too low and because the target values are not achieved consistently. There is evidence that noise in dwellings can adversely affect health, particularly causing annoyance and sleep disturbance, for a considerable number of people. There is a potential for conflict between aspects of current housing policy and rising public expectations. These are the key issues that measures contained in Option 3 seek to address.

128. It is considered that Option 3 meets the overall objective of securing reasonable standards of health and safety for persons in or about buildings in respect of the passage of sound, without imposing disproportionate bureaucracy and costs. The Department will review the operation and costs of the new arrangements once they have been introduced in order to ensure that sound insulation between dwellings and rooms for residential purposes has improved as anticipated.

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