I HAVE written before about the leaky, draughty, carbon dioxide generating, money gobbling, unhealthy houses that are typical in the UK and rarely found elsewhere in northern Europe. I was really looking forward to 2016 when all our new houses would have put that record behind them.

There has been a voluntary set of nine guidelines in place for almost a decade now, the Code for Sustainable Homes, and it ranges from level one, which must be like a tent with the flaps open, to level six which is an airtight completely zero carbon property. This ultimate standard is on a par with the German Passive House quality, which is remarkably well insulated, and probably doesn't need a separate heating system. Indeed a cat, with its heat output of a 20 watt tungsten light bulb, would be sufficient.

At the moment the building regulation expectation is that house builders commit to level three, and in the 2013 Budget the government said that all new build from 2016 would need to be zero carbon, that is, level six. However the intervening year has allowed the building companies to have a word and the latest Budget has backtracked. Now small developments of fifty or fewer houses don't have to reach that target, and they will be encouraged to aim for level four.

This is an opportunity missed to seriously reduce domestic CO2 production, and will keep us nailed firmly at the wrong end of the European tables for affordable heating, insulation and excess winter deaths. The Swedes pay almost twice as much for their gas as we do and yet the proportion who struggle to heat their homes is less than a quarter of the UK figure despite much colder, and longer, winters.

This is not surprising as the average rate of heat loss through the walls of our houses, and windows, is four times the Swedish average, and we are doing very little about it. The Green Deal, to insulate millions of homes, has failed to meet even the minimum of targets, and house builders are not challenged by more demanding building regulations.

If we learn one thing from northern Europe it's that it would help if we built many of our new houses using timber frame kits, prefabricated industrially to the highest insulation standards. They are now quite common in Scotland and have many advantages, particularly as they reduce the use of bricks and cement, both of which cause very high levels of CO2 emissions to produce. Wood, on the other hand, locks away CO2 and prevents it building up in the atmosphere.

Houses, both the number and quality, are still a major problem for the UK