Source: Building Daily

Planning minister Margaret Beckett gave a cautious welcome last week to the UK Green Building Council’s (UK-GBC) proposed Code for Sustainable Buildings.

In a speech to environmental conference Ecobuild, the minister said she thought the industry was travelling in the right direction.

“I am very willing to listen to people coming forward with ideas to reduce carbon emissions. The industry has understood and accepted the basic arrangements needed for further investigation.”

Officials from the Department for Communities and Local Government oversaw the consultation, to which more than 80 companies responded.

As reported in Building, the UK-GBC’s “code” is actually more of a framework, which makes use of existing legislation to help make all buildings sustainable – including existing ones. Buildings would undergo a periodic “building MOT” across a range of requirements, including water, waste and emissions, and standards would be raised over time.

In a summary of its code, the UK-GBC said: “The code should ensure consistency of approach between all policies, tools, guidance and initiatives. It should set the standards, metrics and targets that all sustainability tools should be aligned to and compliant with.”

UK-GBC chief executive Paul King explained: “At the moment the practical delivery and management of sustainable buildings is being held up by a confusing myriad of different policies, regulations, tools and standards.

The government is set to consult on the Code for Sustainable Buildings in the summer. The UK-GBC is understood to have approached the government to set up the government-industry working group recommended in the report.