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Planning and Energy Bill

New clause 8 deals with a series of costs. I referred to the cost of energy generation, whether that is microgeneration or related to the wider question of generation. There will be costs to the consumer living in the house, which could be up to £84 a year for green energy, but will probably be more like £20 a year. Costs will be involved in providing insulation, or whatever. The costs to local authorities would be those involved in policing the mechanism. I suspect that those costs would be significant and additional to the normal cost of building control. More importantly, however, if local authorities adopt the policy themselves and say, ““Don't just do what we say; we're going to do it ourselves,”” they will face additional costs when they buy, renovate or develop buildings for their own purposes. If we consider social housing, which is now more likely to be the direct responsibility of a social landlord than of a local authority, the costs could be very significant. An indirect cost could then come back to the local authority owing to the cost of homelessness and overcrowding, and all the social consequences that flow from that. The most direct costs are those to the consumer and constructor of the new building and those incurred through the generation itself—the costs of the mechanisms. However, there are also wider costs, which are pulled together by subsection (e) of the new clause as"““the impact on the provision of affordable housing””." A range of costs would flow from the Bill.