“We welcome Mr Farron’s comments on plans to tackle the housing shortage, in our manifesto prior to the election we called for 200,000 new homes to be built a year. This would not only help meet demand but stimulate UK industry.

The development of garden cities will provide an opportunity to build truly sustainable developments that are free from the usual barriers of connecting to existing wider structures. They would allow a mix of low carbon technologies to be adopted that could include a heat network, heat pump, solar thermal, hybrid heating, gas absorption heat pumps and micro CHP; and would like to see that each of the homes constructed are all future proofed.

We also recognise the importance of the green economy and the very real need to move towards a low carbon economy but believe that renewables alone cannot meet the UK’s energy requirements, gas will still have a role to play and we would urge the Liberal Democrats to look carefully at their energy policy to provide a balance between affordability, security and sustainability.”