Chancellor encourages low carbon housing

Chancellor Gordon Brown provided a series of measures to help encourage the building of low carbon homes yesterday in his 11th Budget speech.

First of all he extended the grant fund for microgeneration so that more people will be apply to apply for money to generate their own electricity.

The fund will go up by 50 per cent with £18 million now available for Brits, although critics argue that this sum still isn''t enough to fund all the people interested in microgeneration.

Dave Timms, from Friends of the Earth, said: "We think the amount is absolutely pitiful, considering that the UK is lagging behind the other industrialised countries in developing and rolling out small-scale renewable energy technologies."

The last set of microgeneration grants were snapped up in their entirety in just 75 minutes.

Another move of Mr Brown was that he scrapped stamp duty for all new builds which are zero-carbon and under £500,000 in value and this exception will last until 2012.


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