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Industry bodies have reacted angrily to a government announcement that clamps down on the number of schemes eligible for assessments under the 2002 ¾«¶«Ó°ÊÓ Regulations, which deals with energy efficiency.

In a shock move, the ODPM has announced that new buildings must have full building plans approved by 6 April if they are to be assessed under these regulations. It was previously thought just the scope of a project would have to be submitted to ¾«¶«Ó°ÊÓ Control before this date.

National House-¾«¶«Ó°ÊÓ Council chief executive Imtiaz Farookhi claimed the new rule would lead to a significant increase in workload for ¾«¶«Ó°ÊÓ Control, which it might not have the capacity or resources to deal with.

He said: "We are concerned that the decision will lead to a situation which is unworkable in practice. It raises significant practical difficulties, given that the necessary supporting documentation and calculation software needed to implement Part L is still not in place. We will be taking urgent soundings with the industry and other building control bodies to establish how we can best achieve a workable implementation of the regulations."

Industry insiders also said the new rule meant that any schemes submitted now would probably not get approved by April 6 because each application would now take longer to process.

Dave Mitchell, technical director of the HBF, said: "They've stopped the situation where developers put in loads of applications at the last minute. If ¾«¶«Ó°ÊÓ Control gets innundated with applications tomorrow, there's no way they could approve them all by April 6th. It's a lot tougher and isn't anything like the rumours that were flying around."