The Government’s Strategy for Sustainable Construction has set a range of targets for the industry including a 50% reduction in landfill of its wastes and responsible sourcing for 25% of its materials by 2012.

Protesters, unhappy at proposals for a 6,000 home eco town development at Middle Quinton, near Stratford-upon-Avon, are consulting lawyers ahead of possible Judicial Review proceedings over what it says has been an inadequate consultation by DCLG in drawing up the shortlist of 15 possible eco town schemes.

Conservative leader David Cameron has unveiled the party’s Blue/Green Charter.

It would cost £9.2bn to eliminate fuel poverty from all but the poorest households in England according to new research published by the Eaga Partnership Charitable Trust.

“Building brand new eco-towns outside existing towns and cities is a really bad idea when there are 675,000 homes in England alone sitting empty and ripe for refitting with green technologies. Given that demand for housing is right across the UK it makes more sense for every village, town and city to have new housing rather than creating brand new settlements,” Brian Berry, director of external affairs, Federation of Master Builders, 22 May

Despite a growing emphasis on sustainable building in the construction industry, now rapidly becoming mainstream through revised and new Government planning policies, regulatory reforms and Government-backed initiatives such as BREEAM, Dr Paul K Hatchwell finds little hard data on how well these changes are reflected in actual building performance.

A pressure group associated with Labour has published a new policy briefing backing the roll-out of decentralized distributed energy systems.

The Scottish Government has rejected calls for it to take a stronger lead on energy and climate change because it says it is already doing so.

Local authorities calling for greater action on climate change from local stakeholders are likely to be pushing at an open door if an LGA-commissioned public opinion poll published this month is to be believed, with potentially far-reaching implications for planning and sustainable building.

Lib Dem Lord Redesdale said his party was “particularly annoyed about the omission of a renewable heat obligation” from the Energy Bill – calling it  “almost immoral” to leave it out, concluding that “there does not seem to be anything in the Bill which gives us hope that renewable heat will be a government priority.”