Small developers to be exempt from carbon rules

Small housing developers will be exempted from new environmental controls to encourage the building of thousands of homes, under legislation to be announced in the Queen's Speech. Measures introduced last year to ensure that every new home in Britain would have to be built to a "zero carbon" standard by 2016 will be watered down so they do not apply to "small sites", which house builders say are developments with fewer than 50 homes. The legislation is also expected to exempt larger developers from having to meet the highest level of energy efficiency. Instead they will be allowed to design homes to a lower standard and offset the extra carbon that the homes produce by paying into a government fund for energy efficient projects.