My honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State has made the following Written Ministerial Statement.

Members will be interested to know that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) will be jointly consulting during the Recess on ways of making water efficiency mandatory. The consultation will cover water efficiency in new homes, in existing buildings and in respect of the domestic uses of non-household buildings. We are considering a range of measures, including amendments to the Building Regulations 2000. There will be a slightly longer consultation than normal—four months rather than three—as we recognised the difficulty of consulting during a holiday period.

Copies of the consultation document will be available later in the year on both the DCLG and Defra websites and in the Libraries of both Houses. I will be writing separately to Peter Ainsworth, chairman of the Environmental Audit Committee, Michael Jack, chairman of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and Dr Phyllis Starkey, chairman of the Communities and Local Government Committee.