T11: Sustainable Places & Buildings

The importance and emphasis that Government policy is placing on environmental matters is illustrated by the wide range of policy documents that focus on sustainable development and environmental sustainability. These issues underpin planning policy. Broader documents such as the Climate Change Bill and Energy White Paper illustrate the high priority, cross-departmental focus that is being placed on environmental issues.

Large scale development projects can offer significant opportunities to deliver innovative environmental measures drawing together site wide sustainable design, infrastructure planning and higher sustainability standards for new buildings and places. The scale of projects can offer significant opportunities to address a range of core policy imperatives and facilitate exemplar solutions. Such projects are also likely to be delivered over many years and as such will need to be able to respond to tighter environmental control in years to come.

The topic area is vast and fast moving. Policy and regulations are evolving, as is technology to deliver on the objectives. What is clear is the prominence of the topic area in the decision making process, and this will undoubtedly increase further as issues related to climate change and the human impact on the planet rise further up the political and consumer agenda.

This paper aims to introduce: 

• The strategic policy context around planning, development and environmentally sustainable matters including the role of Planning and Climate Change, the Code for Sustainable Homes including ‘zero carbon development’ and Building Regulations in bringing about a step change in the environmental performance of new places and buildings. 
• The potential range of key stakeholders that may be involved at a project specific level, their roles and responsibilities; 
• The key resource issues involved in relation to environmental factors covered by this paper, namely: energy, water, materials use and waste.