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This will of course add a significant amount to the cost of a new house putting them even further out of the reach of first time buyers.

You're right to highlight this issue Douglas: for too long we've been building poor quality housing then wondering why so many people have been suffering from poor health and fuel poverty.

Scotland's energy standards for new homes today are still not up to the standard that Sweden set in 1978. To argue that we should remain more than 30 years behind the best in Europe betrays a shocking lack of ambition from the organisation claiming to represent Scotland's housebuilders.

Of course, the additional cost of better insulation and airtightness is a tiny fraction of the overall build cost, and will usually pay for itself in lower fuel bills in a matter of months.

But all that assumes that new homes are actually built according to the architect's design. Research in England found that nearly half all new homes do not comply with regulations in simple areas such as airtightness. This means many new homes are breaking the law and costing their new owners in high fuel bills.

How many of Scotland's new homes are breaking the law, I hear you ask? We don't know, because the Scottish Government has consistently refused to commission meaningful research into the size of the problem. So much for tough building standards!

Considering the enormous markup on new build houses (at least prior to the recession and probably again when it is over ) the cost of improvements would hardly make any impression on the obscene profits housebuilders had been taking. At a rough guess the cost of building plus the site cost is probably 60% of the selling price.

It is very difficult for me, as an architect, to stay calm about this issue and not deliver a rant based on the obvious. So, for the sake of reason, let us consider the argument that raising standards also raises costs. If you have a level, national, playing field then costs may rise but economies of scale will kick in. That makes it very difficult to assess what the cost increase to buyers will be. There also remains the question of sellers margins and flexibility. So, it may be the case that costs to the buyer rise slightly. However, the buyers running costs will fall. Better security means lower (relative) insurance costs. Better insulation means lower running costs. The increased monthly mortgage costs could be directly offset by the lower monthly running costs. Therefore, the overall impact may be neutral...a good thing.!!

But....we have allowed our national infrastructure to deteriorate relative to other countries for at least the last 50 years. This includes housing. The standard of construction we have approved has been poor relative to other countries. So, running costs have been higher. As a result we pay a fuel subsidy to millions of householders every year. That is clearly bonkers. We should be funding a national effort to improve standards of insulation to the point at which running costs are affordable and subsidies no longer necessary.

That being the case, the standard for new build need to be as high as possible and we need to invest in the improvement of existing homes. This is all tiresomely obvious and has been argued for decades.

Lets just do it.

This is well overdue and I hope the Scottish Government don't halt the pace of reform but rather continue apace to ratchet up the build quality requirements. I bought a new build about five years ago. I no longer live in it and thank goodness. The build quality was awful. The walls (especially internal walls) were paper thin. I could hear what people were doing two floors below mine. It wasn't particularly warm either.