Guidance dictating that windows must be of a size that means ’95 per cent of the elderly female population’ could clean them without stretching is just one example of the millions of rules holding Britain back, says Tom Harwood Readers on the hunt for a country pad outside the hustle
Tom Harwood
Thursday 09 April 2026 5:54 am | Updated: Wednesday 08 April 2026 4:14 pm
Guidance dictating that windows must be of a size that means ’95 per cent of the elderly female population’ could clean them without stretching is just one example of the millions of rules holding Britain back, says Tom Harwood
Readers on the hunt for a country pad outside the hustle and bustle of the city may have stumbled upon an advert for a four bedroom detached house for sale in Brougham Grove, Littlehampton. This quiet cul-de-sac boasts a brisk 40 minute walking distance to the West Sussex seaside, but that’s not why I became obsessed with this particular property this week.
I confess I am not yet in the market for a second home, this newbuild family residence was drawn to my attention by the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust. Why? It is a particularly acute example of a regulation induced phenomenon: teeny tiny window disease.
Once you start to notice how pokey windows are on most new builds you won’t be able to stop. They often look as if they are squinting at you. Or that you have stumbled upon a prison rather than a home.
Where has teeny tiny window disease sprung from? Well it didn’t happen by accident. A labyrinthine web of regulations and guidelines have led us to this point.
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England’s Part B building regulations squeeze windows, since large openings near boundaries count against fire-spread limits. Part K makes generous low-sill openings fussier and pricier through fall-protection requirements. And then Part O caps glazing by orientation and ventilation type, and layers on tougher anti-fall rules, meaning smaller openings, all in the name of preventing overheating.
But beyond the alphabet soup of building regulations, it is a British Standard rule that the Royal Fine Art Commission Trust highlighted in the case of our dark, stunted, half a million quid Littlehampton property:
As the University of Edinburgh notes “clause 8 of the standard recommends that windows should be cleanable from inside by 95 per cent of the elderly female population, without the need for stretching.”
Yes, seriously. If a little old lady can’t reach the top of the window, you shouldn’t build it. Pokey prison-windows to placate our gerontocracy. Or perhaps an imagined idea of our gerontocracy. Can the “elderly female population” not make do with the time honoured idea of a cloth on a stick?
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This guidance is, obviously, insane. It’s the kind of ‘we think this thing sounds nice, and haven’t thought about a single knock-on consequence of it’ attitude that you would expect of someone with a mental age of a child. But there it is, in black and white, in British Standard 8213-1.
Now it is worth noting that in much of the country the British Standard guidelines are just that, guidelines. In England elderly females might – at a push – be allowed to stand on a chair, or use a stick. Though if you were a developer hoping for a smooth ride through the local planning committee, you might not want to risk allowing them to do so.
Extraordinarily, in Scotland, the recommendations of BS 8213 are legally encoded by Scottish Building Standard 4.8.3.
It is unceasingly frustrating to live in a country that fundamentally has so much going for it, that could be so much more, but is bound with thousands of tiny ropes by our lilliputian regulators
Britain is littered with small examples of do-gooding rules, regulations and guidance that serve to make all our lives that little bit worse, piece by piece. Whether they be window regulations, Sunday trading restrictions, plastic drinking straw bans, supermarket layout mandates, diversity targets on company boards, or the fact that commercial organisations of note must put a ridiculous “modern slavery statement” in a “prominent place” on their homepage.
It is unceasingly frustrating to live in a country that fundamentally has so much going for it, that could be so much more, but is bound with thousands of tiny ropes by our lilliputian regulators.
Each little restriction might not look like much, it might even seem well meaning. But the sum total is we live in a more stagnant, uglier, lower growth island than we might.
Tom Harwood is deputy political editor of GBNews
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