Old single-pane windows were missing the vent probably because a) old building codes let you have less ventilation or b) the old windows were leaking air around the frames in addition to conductively leaking heat through the single-pane glass.
Most Victorian era houses have 'air bricks' in various locations (terracotta bricks with a small grid of holes in them) and the houses were pretty leaky.
UK government is moving to remove * cooking on open gas from the building regulations for new homes in a few years (big methane/burning fume generator). Eventually as post above parent says we will move to more rational ways of heating the houses. Piping an inflammable gas to millions of houses has always struck me as a bit strange.
Two, I do not want to have to wait hours for the tank to heat up again after someone takes half a minute too long in the shower.
The power just isn’t there when it comes to electric water heating. I am very glad to live in a house with a combi gas boiler right now where the whole house can have a shower on demand, straight after each other if need be.
Until we all have massive heat pumps or some other way of getting high-power heat from domestic electric, it makes complete sense to me for us to pipe gas around while most of our domestic energy usage in the UK goes to heat.
Even forgetting the evenness issues, which ceramic stoves share too, the modulation just isn't there. Lower power on induction and ceramic means alternating the same power on and off. This does average out over the long term to a lower power, but what if you need a constant lower power? The power settings also tend to be discrete and far apart, which is again completely useless for a lot of fine applications. It's completely useless for instance you want your pilau rice to steam properly at the end of cooking at a low power in a shallow, broad stainless steel pan (as it should be), rather than sticking to the bottom of the pan.
Unless you mean the idea is "how do we make it look like we're doing something about building performance without hurting volume house builders' feelings?".
The 'proper' solution all homes should be built with is low air permeability (no trickle vents) and a whole house ventilation system, ideally with a heat exchanger.