I’m at the Local Government Association Climate Change conference today and the Government’s Communities Secretary Hazel Blears stated quite categorically that the Merton Rule was not under threat despite rumours she’d been backtracking on it under pressure from developers.

The Merton Rule, developed by the titular London Borough, requires all new developments over a certain size to source a certain amount of their energy on site, say 10%. This has the double whammy of driving down energy consumption first so the 10% renewable figure becomes technically viable.

However, Blears added a couple of vague caveats about ‘one size fits all’ and ducked a request from an audience member to clarify whether the rule would be applied site by site or not. We will have to wait and see how it comes out in the wash…