Created for use by Homes England and the people they work with, such as builders, designers, and planners, ‘Healthy Homes - a foundation for healthier and resilient communities’ is a useful tool for all housing providers and developers to ensure new homes are designed to be healthy and follow good design practice.

The design of new homes plays a vital role in preventing many avoidable health problems. Ensuring good indoor air quality (IAQ), comfortable temperatures, plenty of natural light, and energy efficiency is key to creating homes that minimise the risk of respiratory conditions, overheating, and stress-related health problems. A Healthy Home refers to a new dwelling, whether a house, bungalow, apartment or other type of home, designed to support long-term physical and mental wellbeing, while supporting people to live active and fulfilling lives.

A key feature of the new standard is its focus on indoor air quality and ventilation. Ensuring a home is effectively ventilated is essential for good health, with the standard stating that ‘the preferred ventilation strategy for Healthy Homes is a high-efficiency (greater than 75% efficient) Mechanically Ventilated Heat Recovery (MVHR) system, designed in accordance with the Passivhaus standard’. This focus reflects growing awareness of the importance of fresh, filtered air and low-carbon ventilation systems in modern, airtight homes. Meanwhile, a core requirement of the standard is a whole life carbon assessment for both homes and wider development infrastructure.

Vent-Axia's Lo-Carbon Sentinel Econiq range meets these requirements, offering Passivhaus-accredited MVHR that delivers excellent heat recovery and a specific electric power as low as 0.22 Wh/m3. One of the quietest systems on the market, it also provides near silent operation (tested and verified by SRL). The Sentinel Econiq is also now available with a newly published Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). This new EPD offers transparency for specifiers and developers, helping them make informed decisions when selecting ventilation solutions that align with the Healthy Homes Standard.

“We are pleased to see that the Government’s new Healthy Homes Standard recognises the crucial role ventilation plays in improving indoor air quality and so helping protect households’ health. But the standard also goes one step further, stating the importance of highly efficient MVHR with low embodied carbon and low sound levels. Our Lo-Carbon Sentinel Econiq offers all this and more, making it the ideal choice for housebuilders looking for Healthy Homes compliant ventilation,” said Joe Brawn, product and marketing director at Vent Axia. “We are also delighted to announce that we now have an EPD for the Lo-Carbon Sentinel Econiq, offering transparency for specifiers. The document provides embodied carbon information and documents the environmental impacts of its entire lifecycle.”