Families 'may pay the cost of making homes green'

Families will have to shoulder the cost of making homes eco-friendly if the government does not tighten regulations for new builds, residents have said.

Ministers are preparing to publish new regulations for new builds, but the legislation is expected to fall short of making solar panels mandatory.

Oxfordshire eco-home owner Joan Martin said the owners of the house would end up having to improve its energy efficiency, something she said was "wrong".

A Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government (MHCLG) spokesperson said they wanted solar panels on "as many new homes as possible" but they did not want to stifle "innovation and flexibility" by mandating any particular option.

Mrs Martin's husband, Stuart, said their energy bills were "incredibly low" as a result of having an eco-home and questioned why the government would not want every home to be as eco-friendly as possible.

"If I was to buy a new house, why wouldn't I always buy the latest technology?" he said.

Suzanne Dands got her own solar panels fitted to her Victorian terraced house more than 10 years ago.

"They're generating a good amount of electricity," she said.

"Even on a gloomy November afternoon we're still getting 68, 70 odd watts being generated."

She said integrating solar panels into "any design work" for homes "seems like a no-brainer".

Also benefitting from solar panels is Windmill Primary School in Oxford, which got them fitted in 2016.

Headteacher Lynn Knapp said the panels had saved the school money as well as demonstrating to the children that electricity can be generated in a different way.

"I think it should be a much higher priority than it is at the moment," she said.

Barbara Hammond, founder of local social enterprise Low Carbon Hub, agreed.

"We need to get to the point where it would be as unthinkable not to have solar on a household roof as it used to be not to have a chimney," she said.

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