Green Building Council slams PM’s plans to slash environmental guidance

The UK Green Building Council has condemned Prime Minister David Cameron’s pledge to scrap realms of environmental guidance. In a speech to the Federation of Small Businesses earlier this week, the Prime Minister said that by March 2015 Defra will have slashed 80,000 pages of environmental guidance, saving businesses around £100 million per year; “to make it vastly easier and cheaper for businesses to meet environmental obligations.” However Paul King, Chief Executive at the UK Green Building Council, branded the move utterly reprehensible. He said: “The Prime Minister’s boasts of ‘slashing 80,000 pages’ of environmental guidance is. It is the same poisonous political rhetoric from Number 10, devaluing environmental regulation in a slash and burn manner. These words are not only damaging and irresponsible, but misrepresent the wishes of so many modern businesses, both large and small.” 

The move is part of the Government’s Red Tape Challenge to reduce what it has called “the burden of over-regulation” So far more than 3,000 regulations have been identified for scrapping or improvement – covering employment and health and safety law and simplification of environmental legislation.

However, green campaigners see this latest move as more evidence that the Coalition has reneged on its promise to be “the greenest government ever”. Friends of the Earth’s Policy and Campaigns Director Craig Bennett said:

“The Government must stop making the environment a scapegoat for the economic challenges we face. Important rules that safeguard our health and environment are being lost in this ideologically-driven war on red-tape.”

For more information on the Red Tape Challenge click here: