Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, what steps his Department is taking to encourage the use of green (a) roofs and (b) spaces in new housing developments.

The National Planning Policy Framework requires developments to incorporate an appropriate amount of green and other public space. It also states that greater weight should be given to designs which promote high levels of sustainability. We recognise that green roofs can improve the thermal performance of buildings. The Building Regulations set minimum energy performance standards for new homes and non-domestic buildings. The principal way that developers demonstrate compliance is through a whole building energy calculation. For a new building, the properties of green roofs would be taken into account in the calculation of overall energy performance and therefore the carbon emissions from the building.