Large property players today came out in support of government proposals to introduce rules to make new developments in the UK more sustainable.

The UK Green Building Council property task group – which includes Legal & General Property, Segro, Lend Lease and Prologis – said at a breakfast briefing at the Ecobuild conference at Earls Court that it supported rules for commercial buildings similar to the Code for Sustainable Homes launched in December 2006.

The announcement pre-empts a government consultation on sustainable buildings due later this year. Paul King, UK GBC chief executive, said the government should be looking to achieve three aims in the proposed Code for Sustainable Buildings.

He said the government needed to set clear targets for the industry, needed to set clear standards for how to measure and value buildings, and that current tools to benchmark the sustainability of buildings should be aligned under the code.

King told Property Week that the government needed to work with industry in developing the code but that the government should ultimately take charge so it could gradually improve legislative targets under a so called ‘escalator’ system. He added that a Code for Sustainable Buildings should also include existing properties.