Industry leaders to identify green standards for construction

A high-level group of builders, developers, planners and environmental advisers will spearhead efforts to raise the environmental quality of buildings, Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett announced today.

The new Sustainable Buildings Task Group will pinpoint ways in which industry and government can work together to promote sustainable development through better environmental performance in new and existing buildings, and improve significantly performance on key issues including water, energy, waste and building materials such as timber. The group will report to Ministers by February 2004, to coincide with the first anniversary of the government's Sustainable Communities Plan and Energy White Paper.

The group will look at incentives for innovation and how the planning system can help to spread best practice among designers, builders and other professions.

Mrs Beckett also launched a major new skills and training programme for heating installers to boost progress on energy efficiency highlighted in the government's Energy White Paper.

Up to 70,000 people will be trained to ensure that when new, higher standards are introduced for more energy-efficient boilers in 2005 there will be a workforce able to fit them.

The scheme will be run in partnership with the heating industry, Energy Saving Trust, and the Learning and Skills Council.

Mrs Beckett told a Better Buildings Summit that everyone in the construction industry, the financial sector and those who commission public and private buildings must play their part.

"Everyone must be clear that business as usual is not an option. Most of us live in buildings erected long before we were born and our successors will have to live with the environmental consequences of the buildings we construct today," said Mrs Beckett.

(gmcg)