Developing sustainable buildings

We've made some progress towards our target to achieve planning consent for a zero-carbon commercial building and believe that we will achieve it by 2015, in advance of the Government's aim for all new non-domestic buildings to be zero-carbon from 2019. Our developments are designed to have 30% lower carbon emissions on average than current standards. Next year, we will be exploring opportunities to achieve this target on specific projects and we will work with the Government to refine the emerging definition of zero-carbon.

We've made good progress on our target to send zero waste to landfill, having diverted 96% of all managed waste from landfill on our developments in 2010/11 (up from 86% in 2009/10). We do not expect to achieve this challenging target by 2011/12 for developments, but we think we can get close and have increased our annual targets.

For more information on how we achieved this and to see our progress against our 2010/11 targets:

View our CR Report 2011

All data is as at 31 March 2011

2011/12 targets:

• Divert a minimum of 98% of demolition and strip-out waste from landfill and a minimum of 96% of construction and fit-out waste from landfill.
• Achieve a minimum BREEAM Excellent rating on all major office developments and refurbishments, and support a minimum BREEAM Very Good rating on all major retail developments and refurbishments.
• Apply our Sustainability Brief, or an equivalent, to developments conducted through joint ventures or partnerships, and all developments with a construction cost over £300,000.
• Accident frequency rates for reportable accidents and lost day accidents on construction sites not to exceed 0.25 and 0.20 respectively

We will achieve this by:

• Exploring opportunities to achieve our zero-carbon target on development projects.
• Work with our team to improve procurement standards for sustainable materials, monitoring their performance and raising the bar each time.
• Work with our contractors to reduce resource use on site, and measure their energy, waste and water usage.
• Reduce our embodied carbon footprint through changes to our designs and procurement of materials.

Failure to design and build environmentally sustainable buildings in a rapidly changing regulatory and commercial environment

• Impacts: difficulty in securing planning and building permissions; difficulty in letting the asset; risk of accelerated asset value depreciation; fiscal burden from environmental taxes.
• Mitigants: Sustainability Brief for Developments; ISO 14001 certified Environmental Management System.

Failure to implement flood risk adaptation strategy for each asset either during development or in our existing portfolio

• Impacts: inability to sell an asset for full value; difficulty in securing flood insurance cover; increased insurance rates for flood cover.
• Mitigants: portfolio flood assessment plan; flood defence investment where required; Sustainability Brief for Developments; Sustainability Brief for Acquisitions.