By the end of June 2007, the Buildings Research Establishment (who administer the scheme and train and accredit assessors) advise us that 432 trained and accredited assessors were available to undertake assessments for the Code for Sustainable Homes (the Code), and that they are training approximately 50 assessors a month and anticipate having approximately 900 assessors in place by April 2008.
The Code involves a two-stage assessment process. At design-stage the different types of homes in a development are assessed rather than each individual home; the post construction check is against a sample of the home-types that have been completed. The Government are consulting on proposals for homes to receive a mandatory rating but not a mandatory assessment. Some homes might therefore have no assessment and simply receive a zero rating or non rating. Therefore, it is not clear yet how many assessors would be needed. If new house building were to be around 165,000 new homes and all of these were assessed against the Code, the existing 432 assessors would need to carry out 51 assessments each a year. Based on the current growth assessor numbers the estimated 900 assessors available in April 2008 would need to carry out about 25 assessments each a year. These figures are based on the average development size, and the number of different types of properties on each development. In the past year one assessor has completed 60 assessments and registered a further 350 against the Code or its predecessor Ecohomes. These issues will be considered further as part of the consultation.