TRACEY SIMPSON-LAING exaggerates the alleged financial benefits of the Code for Sustainable Homes and does not understand the consequences (Letters, September 9).

The schemes she extols are heavily subsidised with taxpayers’ money – this is not available in the private sector. Repeated studies have shown that many eco schemes have not delivered the energy savings expected. It is not a choice of heating or eating and the matter needs to be put into perspective.

Our last completed dwelling was a three-bedroom detached house which complied with the latest tough building regulations and resulted in combined gas and electric running costs of £13.80p per week. The Code for Sustainable Homes at a medium level would have demanded a 25 per cent improvement over building regulations – that is a reduction in utility bills of 49 pence per day; hardly a figure to put the household on a starvation diet. But to achieve this reduction would have cost £20,000 and resulted in a financial loss. The codes are the latest in a long list of expensive obligations which explain why we and so many other builders have abandoned new-build projects.

This country will never see an economic recovery until housebuilders start up again and that is not going to happen until the regulatory burden is rolled back.

Matthew Laverack, Architect of this parish, Lord Mayor’s Walk, York.