The government-backed plan stipulates in minute detail the green requirements developers will have to fulfil before they are given planning permission for new estates.

These include an elaborate system of “green points”, in which builders must install features to encourage biodiversity, from ponds and climbing creepers to nectar-laden flowers and bat boxes.

Electricity will have to come from street-corner stations powered by wind, ground heat or other renewable sources.

Ministers in John Prescott’s department, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, are pushing for the plan, drawn up by Essex county council, to be adopted by other local authorities as they try to accommodate the 1.2m new homes the government has said must be built in southeast England by 2021.

“We want to see this adopted elsewhere,” said Baroness Andrews, the housing minister. “We would like this to be a template for people to change their communities. That is why roof gardens, balconies and public gardens are important. We need to redefine our notion of private space without thinking we have to build private gardens.”

This week the document will be reviewed by professionals at a three-day forum of organisations involved in the huge housing expansion planned for the “Thames Gateway” on both sides of the river’s estuary.

The government hopes the new homes will be the opposite of the “Identikit estates” criticised last week by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe), the government’s architectural watchdog.

Cabe’s audit of new housing found that a quarter of all homes were poorly designed, with only 6% qualifying as good.

The guide will be used to win over builders to the new buzzwords of high-density, low-energy and biodiversity.

With an estimated 3.8m new homes needed in Britain over the next quarter century, according to government estimates, tomorrow’s suburban family home is more likely to be a flat in a small block on a “play street” rather than a detached house in a cul-de-sac.

Cars will be allowed into play streets, but obstacles such as trees, cycle racks and sand pits will be placed so that drivers have to slow down to 10mph to weave through them.The idea is that parents will feel confident enough to let their children play in the street without worrying about the traffic.

To achieve the required density of housing and minimise the amount of countryside destroyed, the government wants householders in the new developments to settle for spaces such as roof gardens, play streets and balconies rather than private gardens. Because of the need to pack many more homes into each acre, few will be allowed private gardens or yards of more than 15ft by 15ft.

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