PLANNING SYSTEM AND CLIMATE CHANGE

That this House welcomes the commitment made by the Housing Minister, the hon. Member for Pontefract and Castleford, in recent letters to hon. Members to introduce legislation to support the role of local planning authorities in tackling energy efficiency and climate change; welcomes also the restatement of this commitment in the recent Planning White Paper, Planning for a Sustainable Future, and the recognition therein that `the planning system needs to support higher standards' and that it is `vitally important, that new commercial development address the challenges posed by climate change, endorses also the statement in the recent Energy White Paper, Meeting the Energy Challenge, that we need to ensure that developments are as energy efficient as possible; and this includes the estimated nine million new homes to be built between now and 2050'; and so looks to the proposed legislation to enable local authorities to use the planning system to achieve these objectives.