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Will eco towns be greener under the coalition ? |
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21 Jun 2010, 6:27 PM
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There is a significant focus from Local Authorities to set Code for Sustainable Homes level three as a minimum requirement for private sector, according to the organisation 'Sustainable Homes' They claim that over two thirds of Local Authorities are in the process of, or at least considering, introducing planning policy requirements for Code for Sustainable Homes in their area. The Local Authorities are specifying all requirements for developments in terms of a nationally described sustainable buildings standard which includes the Code for Sustainable Homes and BREEAM.
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Case studies supplied by the Energy Saving Trust are available from Sustainable Homes' website which highlight recommendations for planning polices.
And in an item posted by Isabel Hardman on the sustainability page of 'Inside Housing', is a suggestion that the government may re-jig the eco-towns programme. Funding for the supposedly green new towns is frozen at the moment while ministers decide where the financial axe is going to fall, but it seems unlikely that the Tories will want to scrap the scheme entirely when so many of the towns are being led by Conservative councils.
Hardman says that housing minister Grant Shapps recently indicated a possible re-brand would include demands for higher standards from developments. In an interview with the Western Morning News, he criticised the previous government for requiring developments to reach only level 4 of the Code for Sustainable Homes.
Mr Shapps said: ‘It is ridiculous to have towns that have eco as a tagline falling behind eco standards.’
This would make complete sense as the previous ‘challenging standards’ for housing in eco-towns actually matched the standards new public sector housing will have to conform to across the board. When he launched the second wave of eco towns in December, the then housing minister John Healey argued that the houses would ‘actually reach code level four and a half’, which isn’t really a standard at all.
But with the first large-scale level six developments, such as Hanham Hall near Bristol well underway, eco-towns are already lagging behind the rest of the industry. Hardman hopes the new government will take a harder line on the ‘tough new standards’ it wants the re-branded developments to follow.
The Communities and Local Government department insists that ‘no decisions’ have been made on whether the developments approved by the Labour government will receive the same level of funding as promised, or whether the scheme will change.
A spokesman says: ‘We will back genuine new eco-town or eco-village developments, which have broad-based local support and are genuinely environmentally sustainable.’
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