Press releases
New Rules for Public Sector Tenants
February 2009
The Government is aiming to make its own departments exemplars in its drive for sustainable buildings and its stringent requirements could have a big effect on the commercial property market. Graham Standring, Programme Controller at Calthorpe Estates, outlines the changes to public sector procurement practices which will begin to impact from April 1st 2009.
The Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate, known more simply as the SOGE Requirements, are mandatory obligations designed to encourage the buying of sustainable goods and services by Government departments.
The aim is simply to make the Government Estate into sustainability exemplars to which the private sector must attempt to aspire, with the headline number being a CO² emission reduction of 340,000 tonnes by 2013, a massive 25% cut.
The SOGE requirements are the brainchild of the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) whose duty it is to lay before Parliament each year a report setting out the progress made by Her Majesty’s Government towards improving the efficiency and sustainability of its civil estate. In short, this means reducing the size of the civil estate; improving the sustainability of the buildings that already form part of the civil estate and, crucially, ensuring that any new buildings procured for the civil estate are in the upper quartile of energy performance.
The key date is April 1st this year when the Government Estate’s carbon footprint will be measured – effectively placing a stake in the ground from which year on year reductions in carbon emissions for the Estate will be expected as part of the Government’s Carbon Reduction Commitment scheme.
The changes are likely to have a considerable impact on the regional commercial property market as Government departments, post the Lyons Report, increasingly devolve their office space to the regions with the Big Lottery Fund and the Gambling Commission being two of the biggest relocators to the UK’s second city, in recent years.
In order to reach the Government’s sustainability targets, the OGC now requires relocations to new build offices to pass a series of stringent criteria.
In effect, this means that all new office space constructed for, or procured by, the Government Estate must maximise the efficiency of energy, water and waste management and promote positive impacts upon on bio-diversity. Relocations must also take into account the likely impact on staff, transport systems and local communities.
The office space procured must have a BREEAM or equivalent rating of “Excellent” signifying excellence in environmental design and management. For example, office space must have energy efficient air conditioning units to reduce the amount of energy consumed throughout the life cycle and energy efficient gas boilers with a rating of 90% (Band A). Windows must have an Energy Rating label of C or better and all lighting must be high efficiency units.
The OGC also has a firm commitment to reduce water consumption by 25% by 2020; in practice this means a reduction in water consumption to an average of 3m3 per person per year. This is a very strict target to meet and installation of low flush toilets, sprays and automatic taps alone is very unlikely to enable a new building to meet these requirements. For example, during the construction of Calthorpe House in Edgbaston one of the first BREEAM Excellent buildings built in Birmingham, it quickly became apparent that the only way to achieve this tough water efficiency target was the installation of hi-tech rainwater harvesting equipment.
The OGC must report to the Public Accounts Committee on an annual basis to ensure that its carbon reduction targets are being met. The bar is being set high for the Government Estate and the days of relocating to carbon burning ten year old office stock are now over. In future, relocations out of London and the South East can only be to the very highest quality of sustainable building, be they refurbishment or new build.