O’Donnell Brown has submitted plans for six new carbon-neutral homes that would form the UK’s first Passivhaus Plus-certified hamlet.

This is a new certification intended to recognise the production of onsite renewable energy by passively designed building, which in this case includes south-facing photovoltaic panels.

The scheme is in West Tofts, a village in the Thetford Forest area of Norfolk that was requisitioned for wartime military training. Many residents never returned and the area – in what is now being dubbed the Cambridge-Norwich Tech Corridor – still shows signs of the trauma, with several disused and dilapidated buildings.

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