How does the new housing "health book" work?

What is this notebook?

Provided for by the Climate and Resilience Law of 2021, the "housing information book" (CIL) came into force on January 1.

It comes in addition to the mandatory diagnostics when selling or renting a home, including the DPE for energy performance.

It must be established for the construction of a new dwelling, or, in the old one, for the first works "having a significant impact on energy performance", according to the decree of December 27 specifying its methods of application.

Its form is "free", says one at the Ministry of Housing. "It can be a paper file, a USB key, a platform...".

What do we record there?

For a new dwelling, the housing plans, the characteristics of the heating, cooling, ventilation and hot water production equipment and the materials used for the insulation of the roof, walls, doors and windows and floors.

In the old, work on one of these elements, such as insulation work or a change of boiler, must be integrated into it as and when.

In the overseas departments, where the main enemy is the heat, this also includes work aimed at protecting the building from the sun, such as a ventilated roof or a sun visor.

The DPE, as well as the energy audits and environmental certifications of the building, are also recorded there.

To do what ?

“Its great interest is first of all to transmit information associated with housing, and secondly, to facilitate and support energy performance work on housing in the future”, we explain to the ministry. "Since once you have knowledge of certain elements of housing, it is easier to think of a renovation in the future."

Like the children's health record, which records growth, vaccines, treatments ... "It's something good for the tenants, for the people who buy, but it's also good for us, the companies", judges David Morales, vice-president of the Confederation of building crafts (Capeb).

"It's not always easy, once the interior is inhabited, to see what has been done or not without making holes everywhere," he says.

In new construction, the completeness of the information provided allows for a very detailed knowledge of the characteristics of the accommodation.

"There, we are on maintenance and on a next step which is the reuse, the reuse" of building materials, judge Norbert Fanchon, president of the Gambetta group, a real estate developer.

"I see it as a regulation that is ahead of the evolution of mores," he says.

However, he has doubts about the ease of the process to create and maintain it in old buildings.

"When you are private, when you renovate your apartment, the companies are small and not necessarily structured (...) and that's where I don't think it's very easy to implement," he fears.

“We will have to have something a little coordinated and that we have identical things, that it be simple, not to make gas plants”, also warns David Morales.