Local councils are falling behind in their bid  to meet central government targets on cutting carbon dioxide emissions, a conference has heard.
Today, at the Royal Town Planning Institute’’s annual conference Key Planning Issues 2010 in London, the Communities and Local Government head of planning resources and environmental policy Stephanie Hurst  said that planners had not made enough progress on sustainability.
However, planners are to come under greater pressure as the government has targets to make new homes zero carbon by 2016 and new commercial buildings zero carbon by 2019.
Hurst said the …

Councils will have to follow the government’s Total Place initiative if they want to persuade local residents that they are taking steps to save taxpayers money, communities secretary John Denham said today.
In a keynote speech at the New Local Government Network annual conference in London today, Denham said councils would be given more freedom to help them make efficiency savings in their area. He said councils should look at the pilots of the Total Place initiative, due to report their findings by the Budget in April, about how councils can …

The government has a lot of policies on energy efficiency but no overall strategy for retrofitting existing buildings, the government construction tsar has warned.
Paul Morrell OBE, the government’s chief construction adviser, this morning told an audience of property professionals at a Movers & Shakers breakfast event at The Dorchester Hotel on London’s Park Lane that the government needed to do more to incentivise developers if it wanted to retrofit 26m UK homes to make them more energy efficient.
He said there was no strategy to do this even though government currently …

The least energy efficient buildings are to be phased out under new government plans that came to light this week.
Last week, the government responded to the first annual report of its green adviser the Committee on Climate Change. It said that government would consult early in 2010 on a policy to introduce Display Energy Certificates into all commercial buildings.
This would extend the current policy, where all publicly owned buildings are required to have the certificates. It said it would use this information to phase out G rated buildings – the …

A coalition of local authorities and other public sector bodies has named Leeds, Liverpool and Sussex as trial areas for planning strategies to cut energy waste.
Today, the Low Emissions Strategies Partnership – whose management board includes representatives from Greenwich, Sheffield and Wigan councils – named three partners it would work with on Low Emissions Strategies: they are Sussex, Liverpool City Region and Leeds City Region.
Low Emissions Strategies are intended to spread best practise about using the planning system to cut carbon dioxide emissions.
The Sussex Air Quality Partnership and Lewes District …

Planners should take the lead in UK efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles and buildings, says guidance from the government launched today.
The Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the government-sponsored Low Emissions Strategies Partnership said in their 35-page report Low Emissions Strategies Good Practice Guidance that councils should put into place a low emissions strategy. It said planners should help reduce carbon dioxide emissions from building and transport.
The guidance sets out examples of best practice. John Paterson, chair of the Low Emissions Strategy Partnership Board, …

The London Assembly has called for more farms in London in a report published today on how to make the city’s food supply more self-sufficient.
Today, the assembly’s planning and housing committee published a report called Cultivating the Capital: Food Growing and the Planning System in London. It said that 15% of the land in Greater London that is designated as agricultural land is not being actively farmed.
The report has called for London mayor Boris Johnson to change the London Plan to allow planners to encourage more farming within the city. …

Government green adviser the UK Green Building Council has today announced partners for two new sustainability training courses.
Today, the UK-GBC announced it plans to offer two new sustainability training courses in 2010. First, it plans an introductory course on sustainable development with the College of Estate Management. This will begin enrolling in spring and can accommodate 12,500 people in its first year.
And second, it is planning a course for those at senior levels in property companies in partnership with the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership (CPSL) and engineering …

The government must put more pressure on its suppliers to cut their carbon emissions, the government’s green agency said today.
This morning, the Office of Government Commerce has revealed that the government cut its carbon emissions 10% in the 2008/9 financial year. It said this put Whitehall departments in a strong position to cut carbon emissions 12.5% by the end of March 2011 compared to the 1999/2000 baseline.
However, the Sustainable Development Commission – the government watchdog on sustainable development – said it still needed to do more to encourage its suppliers …

The government wants to overhaul the Code for Sustainable Homes to make it easier for homeowners to understand how energy efficient their homes are.
Today, housing and planning minister launched a plan to make the code simpler. He said government would remove the bureaucracy of becoming rated under the system; would more closely align the code to the government’s target of making all new homes zero carbon by 2016; and take account of the difficulty of balancing sustainability with other pressures on housebuilders.
Healey said changing the system would help consumers understand …