Part E Building Regulations

Background

As part of an overall strategy to improve quality of life, the Government has introduced tough new legislation. Commonly referred to as Part E, its aim is to improve the sound insulation of new homes and conversions.

Several research studies have highlighted that millions of people in the UK were having their lives and privacy disturbed by noise from neighbours. The Government recognised that noise has become an increasingly intrusive feature of daily living and, in January 2001, proposed changes to Approved Document E – Resistance to the passage of sound. Noise features in more than two-thirds of complaints to Environmental Health Officers and domestic noise complaints trebled in ten years to 1996. Sound insulation standards for buildings originated in the 1950s and, though refined in later years, are often inadequate to deal with modern patterns of occupation and the growth in home entertainment systems. Studies by the Building Research Establishment (BRE) showed that around 25% of people living in buildings that met current sound insulation standards rated them as poor. Also, BRE estimated that in new dwellings as many as 40% of separating floors and 25% of separating walls failed to meet required standards indicating inadequacies in building methods and the system of control.

With emerging policies for urban regeneration likely to involve increased housing density, Government resolved to improve standards of sound insulation and to improve compliance significantly with the introduction of post-construction testing of dwellings.

Part E Regulations focus on four main items:

E1 Protection against sound from other parts of the building and adjoining buildings.

E2 Protection against sound within a dwelling-house etc.

E3 Reverberation in the common internal parts of buildings containing flats or rooms for residential purposes.

E4 Acoustic conditions in schools.

July 2002 – ‘the initial Government proposal’

Details of the new Part E rules for building construction were released in July 2002 and included requirements for:

• Measures to improve sound insulation between adjoining dwellings by use of higher performance standards which also take better account of the transmission of low frequency sound. This included “rooms for residential purposes” e.g. hotels and hostels, whether purpose-built or formed by conversion of other buildings.

• Post-construction testing of sound insulation between new dwellings at a 10% sampling rate by type. (Also applies to dwellings formed by change of use of a building).

• Protection against sound within a dwelling based on current good practice (not testing) i.e. requirements.