Housey housey

So we wait with bated breath as Ruth Kelly is about to announce the zero carbon house building programme. But wait a minute, are these requirements or just guidelines? Is there going to be any compulsion in these new eco-homes that are to pop up throughout the countryside? Well, err no.
Scratch the surface of any LDF (that's Local Development Framework to those who haven't been enveloped in local planning procedure) and you see houses, thousands and thousands of houses, and as Margaret Becket once said, that's 60 per cent of carbon emissions - we're not even going to talk about infrastructure.
There may be plenty of houseys but we certainly ain't shouting Bingo on environmental policy just yet.