Basingstoke council will look at whether it will be possible to turn housing developments planned for the borough into low carbon estates in its fight against the climate crisis.

Senior officials from Basingstoke and Deane Borough Council will visit exemplar low carbon projects in Chelmsford and Cambridge this Friday, with the aim of learning lessons and whether it would be able to be replicated in the borough.

Thousands of houses are planned for the borough over the next few years, including over 3,000 at Manydown, 1,000 at Basingstoke Golf Course and 750 at Hounsome Fields.

This comes after councillors agreed to look into eco-home developments at a council meeting earlier this year.

The Liberal Democrat-Independent motion recognised that new housebuilding was an opportunity to "put climate emergency response at the forefront of new development", and was unanimously supported in March.

The borough council's own climate change strategy identifies that over 25 per cent of carbon emission in Basingstoke and Deane relate to the heating and powering of homes.

In 2019, the council set lofty ambitions for the borough to be carbon-neutral by the end of 2030.

The motion was put to the authority's ruling cabinet of councillors last week, who said that they would be looking at whether they could learn lessons from low-carbon developments, such as the Parc Eirin development in Wales.

Parc Eirin is a development of 225 affordable eco-houses in which each house has solar panels built in, hot water thermal storage, battery storage of electrical power, deep borehole ground source heating and 3 phase electrical power supplies for superfast electrical vehicle charging.

Council leader Ken Rhatigan said it was important for the council to be learning lessons, as they plan to do on Friday's trip, "to understand what others do".

He continued: "I think it is important that we gain knowledge from others and question other people in what is brought forward for development."

Meanwhile, the cabinet member for the natural environment and climate improvement, Cllr Mark Ruffell, said he hoped that projects like this will become part of the design standards when the borough's local plan is updated.

A local plan is a document setting out what type of development the council deems appropriate.

He said: "It should be borne in mind that climate change and our attitudes to it will be running through our local plan updated like a golden thread, and this is another opportunity for us to make this known to all involved and to see whether this is doable in Basingstoke and Deane."

But, he warned: "I should point out that [Parc Eirin] had a substantial amount of funding from the Welsh assembly and national government, and I don't think we are going to be blessed with that advantage in our borough."

Cllr John McKay, a Lib Dem councillor for Eastrop and Grove who proposed the motion to look into the possibility of doing a similar development, said back in March: “Over a quarter of our borough’s carbon emissions come from the heating and powering of homes.

"Making household energy usage more efficient and greener is going to vital if we’re to reach our target of becoming carbon neutral as a Borough by 2030.

"Meeting this important challenge while also building the affordable new homes that our area urgently needs is not going to be easy. The only way to do it is to make all new housing developments as eco friendly as possible.

“We’ve seen elsewhere what can be done with eco-housing. Homes in the Park Eirin development in Wales, for example, have a high level of insulation, built-in solar panels, hot water thermal storage, deep borehole ground source heating and three phase electrical power supplies for superfast electric vehicle charging.

“We need to be equally ambitious here in Basingstoke. We have the opportunity to make Manydown a beacon project that sets new standards for eco-homes, not just in our Borough but across the whole of the UK.

"If we get this right, other Councils will look to us to see how new housing developments should be designed."