National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) must involve informed
examination of all sustainability options
The National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) has at its core a
‘presumption in favour of sustainable development’. To achieve
this, application of the NPPF should place a stronger obligation on
planning authorities to seek the advice of design professionals as
to how best to achieve long-term sustainable development, believes
Guy Thompson, head of architecture and sustainability at MPA The
Concrete Centre.
A major contributor to a building’s sustainability and overall
energy efficiency is the choice of
construction material. The knowledge of how this impacts on a
building’s long-term sustainability is not an immediate or natural
fit with the skill set hitherto used by planning officers. Now that
sustainability and not just environment is to be placed at the
heart of decision making, it is imperative that planning officers
fully involve design professionals in order to ensure the best
sustainable solution. Failure to engage the design professional on
a project-by-project basis in this way could compromise and
undermine the ambition of the NPPF to deliver sustainable solutions
that are central to achieving a low carbon future.
Exactly what constitutes ‘sustainable development’ has long been
an area for debate. NPPF enshrines the Brundtland principles of
sustainable development and clarifying this further, the UK
Sustainable Development Strategy, ‘Securing the Future’, sets out
five guiding principles of sustainable development:
• Living within the planet’s environmental limits
• Ensuring a strong, healthy and just society
• Achieving a sustainable economy
• Promoting good governance
• Using sound science responsibly.
In order to achieve these aims it is important to focus on the
practicalities of whole life sustainability from design through to
end-of-life including the long-term operation of buildings, which
is the source of the vast majority of CO2 emissions.
Arguably, it may be appropriate that the policy remains vague as
this will leave interpretation and solutions to be debated and
tested in more appropriate forums and, importantly, enable
designers to make the case for their individual development
proposals. The more specific criteria set out by some planning
authorities is in danger of being over simplistic using
cherry-picked single issue sustainability benefits rather than an
overall, holistic view. Sustainability issues are many and vary in
importance and relevance depending on the type of building being
proposed, on its location and on its design life to name but a
few.
Well-informed design professionals and clients are calling for
real, holistic, long-term sustainable solutions and, increasingly,
are finding that call includes an examination of sustainability
from a range of aspects including the local responsible sourcing of
construction materials to the minimisation of long-term heating and
cooling requirements.
Heavyweight concrete construction offers a formidable range of
long-term sustainability benefits. Its thermal mass is widely recognised as being an
essential part of low energy building strategies. The thermal
efficiency of heavyweight construction reduces or even negates the
need for energy hungry air conditioning and heating plus it reduces
the use of and/or the need for renewable. It plays an increasingly
important role in providing energy savings for housing, especially
when used in conjunction with Passiv Solar Design. Heavyweight
construction is robust and flood resilient, it has inherent fire resistance and sound
insulation and does not need additional finishes and chemical
preservatives. The robustness and thermal efficiency benefits
of heavyweight construction means that it is fully able to cope
with the increased risk of severe storms, flooding and hotter
summer temperatures resulting from predicted climate change. At the
end-of-life, concrete buildings can be easily altered to answer new
user demands. Should this not be an option, concrete can be
fully recycled to create new construction
materials.
Concrete products are locally sourced
from within the UK. The average distance to site is only five miles
for ready-mixed concrete and 90 miles for concrete products. This
is in stark comparison to timber products and for the raw materials
for steel which have often travelled many thousands of miles.
Furthermore, concrete products are responsibly sourced with a high recycled content.
Concrete blocks can contain up to 80% recycled material and overall
do not produce waste. Indeed, the UK cement industry uses 47 times
more waste than it produces.
In 2008 in order to forward sustainability, the concrete
industry signed up and committed to the Concrete Sustainable
Construction Strategy. This landmark pan-industry agreement had as
its central premise a common vision that “by 2012, the UK concrete
industry will be recognised as the leader in sustainable
construction, by taking a dynamic role in delivering a sustainable
built environment in a manner that is profitable, socially
responsible and functions within environmental limits.” The
2012 Concrete Sustainability Performance Report demonstrates
how far the industry has come in realising its vision to further
increase its sustainability lead over other construction material
sectors.
Design professionals are best placed to ascertain and compare
the real whole life sustainability benefits of construction
materials together with the myriad of other design considerations
necessary to determine the best sustainable development solution.
Mis-application of NPPF could potentially remove this element of
measured consideration and in doing so would seriously undermine
its own ‘presumption in favour of sustainable
development’. Informed design professionals must continue to
be central to the specification and design process to ensure that
the best holistic and long-term sustainable solution is chosen.
Ref: TCC771