WHAT a surprise from the prime minster of talk. Climate change is the most important challenge facing us, he says.

So important that the G8 summit agreed nothing. So important that pledges to improve the energy efficiency of homes are now to be ditched as "unnecessary gold plating", according to housing minister Yvette Cooper.

Every week councillors nationwide receive pages of waffle from this Government advising us of our duty to take action to reduce carbon emissions. I have spent the past year working with councillors and council officers in York to develop planning guidance to encourage more sustainable development.

Our main stumbling block is the continued existence of building regulations that are decades out of date. Whatever guidelines we put in place, we are challenged by developers and builders who flatly refuse to build to a standard higher than that specified in our cruddy building regulations.

Without effective national guidelines expressly designed to raise the bar and oblige all developments to be built to a higher and more environmentally sustainable standard, all the rest is pious cant.

In this council we have cross-party consensus about the need for more energy efficient homes. It's a no brainer. Apart from anything else an energy efficient home is, by definition, a more "affordable home".

Tackling energy waste tackles fuel poverty as well as directly addressing the issue of climate change.

The prime minister tells us he wants us to be at the heart of Europe. If it weren't for European directives we would probably still have done nothing about waste management, reducing landfill, increasing recycling, cleaning up our beaches, managing our energy use, etc.

I suppose we have to hope a European directive on building regulations does this hopeless administration's work for them.

Coun Christian Vassie,

Chair of planning and

transport,

City of York Council,

Blake Court,

Wheldrake, York.

Updated: 09:33 Wednesday, July 20, 2005