IN Brief:
- The new ECREB board is intended to steer delivery of the New Homes Sector Transition Plan on embodied carbon.
- Its early focus includes reducing waste, improving resource efficiency, and coordinating practical action across the supply chain.
- The move comes as the Future Homes Standard remains in finalisation and embodied carbon rises higher on the housing agenda.
Future Homes Hub has established a new Embodied Carbon and Resource Efficiency Board, or ECREB, to provide strategic leadership for the implementation of the New Homes Sector Transition Plan. The board brings together homebuilders, suppliers, designers, local government, and government departments around a shared programme focused on embodied emissions in new housing.
The immediate brief is broader than materials alone. Future Homes Hub said the board will tackle the carbon embodied in building materials, transport, and construction processes, while one of its early priorities will be resource efficiencies that cut waste and save cost. The board held its first meeting in mid-March and is being co-chaired by Fergus Harradence from the Department for Business and Trade and Bukky Bird, group sustainability director at Barratt Redrow.
The timing is important. As the operational performance of new homes is pushed higher, the carbon associated with what gets specified, transported, and assembled on site becomes harder to ignore. The government’s Future Homes and Buildings Standards consultation page states that the formal response will be published in early 2026, and ministers said on 15 March 2026 that new homes will be built with solar as standard under the Future Homes Standard.
Future Homes Hub’s longer-running embodied and whole-life carbon work already sets out a roadmap goal of production and construction that achieves net zero embodied carbon. Its current programme includes voluntary measurement and disclosure, benchmark development, greater availability of environmental product data, and the use of whole-life carbon conventions and assessment tools. More detail on that work is available through the Hub’s embodied and whole-life carbon project page.
