Communities secretary Ruth Kelly has challenged house builders to design and build “several thousand” low or zero carbon homes under the new Carbon Challenge to be administered by English Partnerships.

The Challenge is intended as a “spearhead” of the move towards zero carbon and is open to developers and builders across Europe to design low or zero carbon homes on five sites specified over the next 12 months. The first two, Hanham Hall Hospital near Bristol and Peterborough’s Glebe Road, will be joined by three others.

“We need to design communities, not just houses,” said Ms Kelly. “While there are lots of carbon saving measures which can be used in individual homes, designing a whole community gives developers scope to make use of schemes like district heating and combined heat and power plants.”

Under the scheme EP will ask regional development agencies, private developers and housing associations to nominate their own sites.

“Climate change is with us now, so now is the time to act,” said EP director Trevor Beattie.

The Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment welcomed the Challenge and said the stringent specifications should prompt innovative solutions. It said the whole community must be designed, not just individual homes, so only a strategic approach could rise to the challenge.

But it said the Challenge homes would only be a very small percentage of total building and work is needed on making existing stock more sustainable.

But Liberal Democrat communities spokesman Don Foster said we don’t need a challenge to produce zero carbon housing, we need to get on and start building them as they do in Europe and North America.

“This latest Government announcement is yet another attempt at grabbing the headlines, rather than a serious attempt to make our homes and communities more energy efficient,” he said.

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