Government Policy is that the standards required by Building Regulations are a minimum.
The latest 'Fifth Fuel Special' newsletter from the Association for the Conservation of Energy states examples of what happens in practice.

E.g. "When drafting their latest Planning Policy, Milton Keynes Council tried to specify energy efficiency requirements covering all aspects of building construction, including insulation, central heating, etc. The Government Inspector objected to this saying that the Council should confine itself to matters like building layout and orientation. The Inspector also removed completely the requirement for carbon neutrality on site or contributions to the Council's carbon offset fund. The newsletter stated "In doing so the Inspector was ignoring the Govenrment's own Regional Planning Guidance, which urges local authorities to "encourage the use of energy efficient materials and technologies by using all the tools at their disposal".

And another...
Cambridge City Council was required to water down its planning policy requiring large developers to 'provide evidence of how they have minimised energy consumption, maximised energy efficiency and considered the feasibility of using CHP systems'. This was becuase, to quote the Government Inspector, it was 'unreasonable to the extent that it imposes more onerous requirements than the Building Regulations'.

The Draft Planning Policy Statement: Planning and Climate Change - Supplement to Planning Policy Statement 1
appears to overturn Government policy making Ministers' 'minimum' into the maximum.
Para 31 of the Draft PPS states "Planning Authorities should not need, however, to devise their own standards for the environmental performace of individual buildings as these are set out nationally through the Building Regulations"

The Local Planning Authorities: Energy and Efficiency Bill would enable local authorities to include in their local development energy efficiency standards higher than those required by Building Regulations, along with targets for generating energy from renewable and low carbon sources. The Bill will allow local authorities to impose similar requirements when determining individual planning applications.

DCLG Minister Phil Woolas. acting on behalf of his Secretary of State, Ruth Kelly MP, deliberately blocked the The Local Planning Authorities: Energy and Efficiency Bill.

Please write to your MP and ask them to:
* Take up the matter with Ruth Kelly - Secretary of State and Phil Woolas - Minister of State
* Sign Early Day Motion No 471 in support of the Bill
* Support the ACE's response to the consultation on the new draft PPS which has been sent to them.

You might also like to write to Ruth Kelly and Phil Woolas at Hosaue of Commons, London SW1A 0AA demanding that they support the Bill when it returns to the House of Commons

Further details at www.ukace.org/

Tuna,
Agree entirely, local authorities should be kept away from the whole subject, they will only use it for one upmanship against other authorities, their own political agenda and to prevent housing on their doorstep. The government are well aware of this and will not allow this bill through.
The Code for Sustainable Homes is supposed to be gradually phased in, we are already seeing demands for levels 4 and 5 when the government intentions are for level 3 from April 2008!

Why shouldn't local planning authorities, as part of a strategic plan, be allowed to implement variations on the planning regulations - as long as they exceed the current planning requirements? I wouldn't mind betting that houses in a 'low carbon' or 'carbon neutral' housing area would benefit from the price increases seen by houses in 'areas of outstanding natural beauty' or 'conservation areas'. Using market forces to improve the housing stock has to be a good thing, and a bit of open competition between local authorities should see the green and quality issues pushed very hard.

Hmmm, just getting involved with this issue as a climate change campaigner.

At first sight it all seems like bowing to the developers who are apparently struggling with the idea of low-cost housing which is also highly energy-efficient. This is not rocket science-there are plenty of well-established models of such buildings in the world.

Why is inconsistency and competition between councils 'innovation's worst enemy'? I'm not a great fan of capitalism but I thought this was supposed to be it's strong point - leadership, inspiration,innovation etc.

I like the suggestion to make the passivhaus standard universal but I can't see why a forward-thinking developer and a council can't get ahead of the game and build homes like this, to the advantage of both, and as a model/pilot. Is there some sort of cartel among developers lobbying against this?

The crucial issue is that we reduce absolute levels of greenhouse gas emissions, which means starting NOW to reduce them as fast as possible.

I hope you are wrong- global warming is here to stay, I agree (at least for a couple of centuries). What we can do is prevent it from becoming much much worse in the second half of this century. ..I am prepared to put in the effort now in the hope that there is still 'a window of opportunity'. I won't be around, but my daughter will be.

I don't see how the planners can be so whimsical - it takes a good year here to pass new planning policy. Of course councils change, but so does national government. There are clearly risks for developers but that's business! So far it seems to be a thriving area with the government providing ample demand for decades to come.

I'll come back to you on the low-cost housing...

Trying to understand how local government works from scratch is nightmarish. Thanks for your comments Peter-I found this exchange very useful. A constructive dialogue between campaigners, developers and planners seems to be much needed.

Tuna, well put, I need say no more than that.

Posted By: GuestI'm not entirely convinced- consumers do compete directly(eg bidding) and indirectly (keeping up with the Jones', flashiest car etc). This drives demand to a significant extent. Councils competing to be 'the greenest' , whatever their motives, are an example of market forces being used in a manner favourable to the environment. You might not see how they benefit, but it is councils who are asking to be allowed to raise standards

Yes, but they can ask until they are blue in the face if the standards cannot be met, or cannot be paid for. If one council were to go above the others and demand (say) windows with better U-values than all the others, the suppliers have no real incentive to improve their product for a minority and other councils have no incentive to compete on that front when they could claim an easier PR victory by going on about something else instead. The builders in that one council would just go abroad for windows meeting the standard and the industry as a whole would change very little.

In fact the game of local one-upmanship is quite dangerous. After Ken Livingston suggested a 60% reduction in CO2 for london - which is widely regarded as unreachable - an MP in wales (I believe) proposed that their local town should commit to a 90% reduction. Anyone who has looked into this area will appreciate that unless you ban cars, all new building and introduce rolling blackouts, you cannot make such a reduction under current conditions. Yet the desire to compete was there and achieved only an impossible target that will hurt local development for the sake of a silly headline.

Or, to use your other analogy, car manufacturers don't produce ever better cars just because consumers want something better than their neighbours - instead they add confusing bells and whistles, marketing and other incentives for people to buy their cars. The vehicle on your drive has changed very little due to customer demand - all of the significant changes have come about because of changes in safety and pollution legislation.

If you want to raise standards, do it nationally, consistently and properly so that the standards are clear, beneficial and can be economically met.

OK, I'm going to say you have some good points (especially the pointless zero-carbon rhetoric). I'm primarily and over-ridingly interested in mitigating climate change and see all other concerns as secondary, but I want genuine effective mitigation i.e whatever will really work.

I'll take these points to ACE for a response if ok with you.

I have just received this email from ACE

Graham

I am replying to you on behalf of ACE, regarding the message posted on the website. Please feel free to post this as a response.

I think everyone would agree that it requires national government intervention to improve the mass of housing in the UK to reduce carbon emissions. There has clearly been a market failure on emissions and energy use in housing, even in new build. We clearly cannot leave it to private developers to build better from the goodness of their hearts, or to prospective buyers to demand better buildings - it just hasn't happened. Likewise, we cannot rely on better quality social housing to make a significant impact, mainly because there is so little left - so much of it has been sold off - and there has been an inadequate supply of new social housing for rent since the early 1970's.

The government is proposing a "green package" for new build housing. A Code for Sustainable Homes, followed, sometime later (date unspecified) by a code for non-domestic buildings; a progressive improvement in building regulations, in 2010, 2013 and 2016, the last date when "zero-carbon" should be achieved; and a new national planning policy statement, which requires regional and local planners to consider "low-carbon energy" in drawing up their spatial plans. ACE has broadly supported the idea of the package and its objectives. The question is, is it realistic as set out, and does it hold back organisations that can move faster than government?

The present version of the Code for Sustainable Homes is better than the one originally proposed, which set inadequate standards. There are some important questions emerging about the new Code, but for the moment ACE supports it, with the aim of improving it later. We have called for more urgency from government on producing a code for non-domestic buildings.

On the question of a progressive improvement in building regs, in 2010, 2013 and 2016, setting aside significant concerns about whether "zero-carbon" is actually achievable in urban areas on an individual house basis (some commentators say technically it is not), this is also supported by ACE, but we think the government can go faster, earlier - 2010 will see regs move to Code level 3, a 25% CO2 reduction on current Part L, but this is possible now - indeed any social housing built with government money will have reach this standard - so why is the government waiting?

The Planning Policy Statement: Climate Change is very disappointing. While it requires regional and local planners to consider "low-carbon" energy in drawing up their spatial plans, it gives them no new powers to get private developers to join local CHP schemes, or install microgeneration to any significant degree, and bans councils from even requiring that all housing development reaches Code level 3 - easily and cheaply achievable. No speculative developer should be frightened about what the government is proposing - its business as usual until 2010, when the next building regulations kick in (if they are not delayed or watered down, as the last round were). It is only 2013 when things start to get expensive, and 2016 when they could get impossible!

The government is open to the accusation that it is leaving the really difficult steps until after it is out of office, including one - zero-carbon - that may not be possible. There is no guarantee that any future government will honour the promises of this one, especially if they can point to inadequate preparation by their predecessors. This is the problem with leaving everything to the government.

We need far more examples of lower carbon buildings in the UK now, rather than waiting six years. This is the reason for the Local Planning Authorities: Energy and Efficiency Bill, to enshrine local action as a right, rather than something that DCLG can fiddle with endlessly, depending on how much fuss the housebuilders make (no one has produced any evidence of higher energy efficiency standards reducing development opportunities, or it holding back the sustainable energy business). The reality is that the overwhelming majority of local planning authorities will probably do little about energy, because they lack the skills and resources to tackle it. ACE is arguing that the handful of local authorities that have the resources and knowledge of sustainable energy - such as Woking - should be empowered to negotiate with developers from a position of strength, not weakness. This way the UK can produce, in certain areas, various templates of lower carbon buildings and district CHP schemes, that can be copied elsewhere to help make 2013 (and hopefully 2016) more likely.

Ian Manders
Deputy Director, ACE
ian@ukace.org