Examination of Witnesses (Questions 700-719)
MS SALLY
BROOKS, MR
MARTIN LIPSON
AND MR
TIM BYLES
6 DECEMBER 2006
Q700 Mr Chaytor: The Committee's
impression from previous evidence is that waves 1, 2 and 3 were
pushed forward pretty quickly and the priority given to the whole
range of sustainability issues was not as high as it could have
been. Is there some evaluation of the sustainability impacts in
the first three waves? Or will there be an evaluation when these
schools are up and running in terms of the carbon footprint, the
changing travel patterns or biodiversity? That is not a point
that has been raised at all. Are there plans to formally evaluate
the impact of the first three waves of schools?
Ms Brooks: Yes, we have plans
to formally evaluate almost everything about the early waves of
BSF. We are currently looking at how we evaluate the energy use
and the carbon footprint. Whether we evaluate that whole sustainability
thing is really dependent on a lot of things but we do need as
a priority to look at how we can deliver a reduction in carbon
emissions and the cost of that—and not just the cost but
how it works. If you look at the book we have just published on
sustainable schools, one of the things that appears to happen
when you design a sustainable school with low energy use is that,
in the first two or three years, the energy use seems to be extremely
high compared with what we expect it to be.
Q701 Chairman: Why?
Ms Brooks: We are looking into
that now. We are learning by our mistakes. We had the most sustainable
school, trying to go for the lowest possible energy use; everybody
said it was an example of best practice. It has opened, and the
energy use is much higher than was expected. The architects are
in there, the BRE are doing an evaluation, they are all doing
evaluations of why this is happening. It is coming down, but,
again, it is a case of learning by doing. Nobody could have predicted
that was going to happen. They are now trying to find out why
it is going to happen, to make sure it does not happen again.
Chairman: Perhaps you could consult with
the Blue School down in Wells. We went there and they energised
the students to bring down their energy use very successfully.
Q702 Mr Chaytor: That seems astonishing.
This is now in a document.
Ms Brooks: This is in the sustainability
green book which we just published. We have taken case studies.
I do not know the details of what is happening there but I think
it is tremendously good that the architect and the school and
the local authority who did this have acknowledged there is a
problem and have said, "We are going to go and look at exactly
why this is not working. We are going to drill down into the detail
and we are going to make it work and then we are going to spread
that good practice so that nobody else gets it." They have
not got it completely wrong but it has to be worked in. We cannot
just say we designed these schools in BSF waves 1, 2 and 3 to
be low carbon without evaluating whether that is happening. Absolutely,
we would have to do that, and we would have to use that information
to feed into our expectations for future schools built—and
not just through BSF but all the new schools we build—because
we will be expecting higher standards in terms of carbon usage
and we need to know how it works.
Q703 Mr Chaytor: In future waves,
beyond wave 3, you have now specified that there should be an
architectural champion involved in the partnership. Is that right?
Ms Brooks: No, we have always
had a design champion.
Q704 Mr Chaytor: So there is no change?
Ms Brooks: There is a change in
how we are evaluating design, yes. One of the issues that has
come up—and, again, it is how we learn from doing—is
that often at the end of the outline design period when a preferred
bidder is chosen, when we looked at the designs of that preferred
bidder they were not always as good as we would like them to be.
We were using CABE to do that looking at. We realised that that
is too late. There is no point saying at that point, "The
designs aren't very good," so we are now working with CABE.
We have not quite got there yet, but we hope to announce next
month a new way of evaluating design to the short-listed bidders,
where CABE is involved right from the beginning; looks at, in
week 1, if you like, the early outline designs; reports back both
to the local authority and to PfS and to DfES on what they consider
to be the strengths and weaknesses of those short-listed designers;
and, most importantly, talks to the designers about what they
consider to be their strengths and weaknesses early on, to give
those designers a chance to improve, so that, by the end of that
design period, when the preferred bidder is appointed, they have
already had to demonstrate that they are good at design.
Q705 Mr Chaytor: In terms of guidelines
over the range of sustainability issues, what has been the impact
of the action plan on sustainable procurement? This was not in
place for the further wave 1 schools, but it is now in place,
I understand. Is that starting to have an impact or not? Or is
that irrelevant to the whole issue?
Ms Brooks: I am afraid we do not
know the answer to that, so we will have to come back to you on
that one.
Mr Lipson: Are you thinking of
the OGC guidance?
Q706 Mr Chaytor: Presumably, yes.
Mr Lipson: I am not sure of the
answer.
Mr Chaytor: Obviously it has not had
an impact. It exists but it has not had an impact.
Q707 Chairman: Would you write to
the Committee on that.
Ms Brooks: Yes, we will.[7]
Perhaps I could correct something I said earlier, because I do
not want to mislead you, on the issue about freedom of schools
to borrow. Apparently schools are legally able to borrow but the
Department limits the circumstances, but we do not allow them,
for example, to mortgage their buildings because of the risk of
that. In practice, therefore, very few schools do borrow but they
are able to.
Q708 Mr Marsden: I would like to press
you on the environmental considerations and how you validate them.
BREEAM on previous occasions has been used as a bit of a mantra
for that. I do not want to carp but I do want to ask you very
specifically about some of the criticisms we have had. We had
one consultant before the Committee from Arup who was very vividly
sceptical about BREEAM. Other people have said that it is possible
to score highly on one indicator, like a brown-field site, and
the others get neglected. Are you reviewing the efficacy of BREEAM?
Ms Brooks: Yes. BREEAM balances
out, as I am sure you have been told. It has eight areas that
it covers and you have to have a certain score. You can have a
high score in some areas and a low score in other areas and still
meet BREEAM "very good". You can score very highly in
every other area and not that highly in terms of your carbon use
and still get BREEAM "very good". It is not easy to
do but it is possible. BREEAM "very good" is very good.
Q709 Mr Marsden: I have to say that
the gentleman from Arup who came before us said that "very
good" in his view meant just about passable.
Ms Brooks: I am sorry, the BREEAM
approach—
Q710 Mr Marsden: You used the words
"very good".
Ms Brooks: Yes, I should not have
used the words "very good". BREEAM is a good approach
to an overall evaluation of sustainability across the piece. It
is about the level at which you set it. We set it at something
like 65% is very good and 75% is excellent. You can ratchet that
up to 80% or 90%.
Q711 Mr Marsden: You are saying,
basically, that you think the goalposts need to be lifted a bit.
Ms Brooks: But you can lift the
goalposts across BREEAM and it still will not necessarily get
you carbon neutral or low carbon scores. We will set up something
separate which is just about carbon use, which says, "This
is a stand-alone expectation that carbon reduction of x%"
or "Within BREEAM the carbon bit is mandatory and you cannot
offset the carbon against the others." I think we are looking
at mandatory expectations around reductions in carbon emissions.
Mr Byles: I think BREEAM is a
very helpful starting point but you do have to look at an assessment
in the context of a particular site you are talking about. It
would be a very difficult world if you had no objective measure
to set, but, as Sally has said, the characteristics of a site
can influence very significantly the scoring that can be achieved.
Q712 Mr Marsden: Sally, you say you
are doing a review. How quickly will you come up with conclusions
from that review? How quickly will they be incorporated into the
next wave?
Ms Brooks: We are looking at the
moment at technically the ability to reach certain reductions
in carbon emissions and the costs of that; that is, how much does
it cost to get your 40/50/60/70/80% reduction? It is quite a complicated
thing.
Q713 Mr Marsden: That sounds to me
like you are saying we are not going to get a revision of BREEAM
any time soon but you are saying you are not happy with it at
the moment.
Ms Brooks: We do not need to do
a revision of BREEAM in order to change our expectations on carbon
reductions.
Q714 Mr Marsden: When I asked you
earlier, you said you were not happy with BREEAM. I asked, "Are
you proposing to revise it?" and you said yes. You are now
saying that you are not.
Ms Brooks: No, I am not saying
I am not. I am saying that we can revise BREEAM; it may take quite
a while to do that; we do not need to wait for that revision in
order to say, if ministers so choose, that we want to reduce carbon
emissions.
Mr Marsden: I think it would be really
helpful if you could come back to the Committee with some written
details on progress on that.[8]
Q715 Chairman: Is BREEAM not becoming
a bit of a fig leaf, though?
Ms Brooks: Yes.
Q716 Chairman: We are talking about
sustainable schools. I was involved in discussing a new Academy
in Peterborough. The building of the new Academy, which I think
everyone locally celebrates—I think it is a science and
engineering Academy—is going to do the most awful things
in terms of the transportation of people in Peterborough. If there
is not a transport plan built into any new development like this,
it is a disaster for sustainability. How far do those broader
aspects of sustainability come in when anyone is looking at the
sustainability of a school?
Ms Brooks: We have sustainability
model which has what we call eight doorways, which include travel,
waste and a lot of things outside the remit of BREEAM. In any
BSF strategy for change, we expect the local authority will cover
those. However, to some extent you have to build schools where
the pupils are.
Q717 Chairman: It still does not
mean you should not have a transport policy.
Ms Brooks: No, obviously not.
We are providing some extra capital to schools to provide sustainable
transport plans for them. All schools are going to be expected
to have sustainable travel plans.
Q718 Chairman: At your conference
earlier this week, on Monday, many local authorities apparently
said that when you were thinking about sustainability driving
the selection of a preferred bidder by the local authority, it
weighed as little as 2% of the total consideration. What do you
say about that?
Ms Brooks: There are two separate
issues here.
Q719 Chairman: It worries me that
you have these really clever construction companies and they come
along and they nudge the local authority and say, "Yeah,
we've got to do something about sustainability, but we'll fix
that for you."
Ms Brooks: No. The evaluation,
design and sustainability is separate from the fact that schools
have to meet a certain level. It is a condition of the funding
that schools have. All new schools have to meet that BREEAM "very
good" level. That is separate. That is already a given. You
are not evaluating bidders and saying, "Which of you is going
to deliver BREEAM "very good"." It is a given that
all those bidders are required to deliver that as part of the
funding. It is not evaluating how good they are in that term.
They have to do that as a requirement of being a short-listed
bidder. They have to already have committed to deliver BREEAM
"very good". Within that you can then choose between
them, in terms of a lot of things around their design, including
sustainability. The balance is up to the local authorities to
some extent. We give guidance but the balance is down to them.
The bar they all have to cover is BREEAM "very good".
If we were to up our requirements on carbon neutral schools/low
carbon schools, that would be a bar for all of them to jump before
they were short-listed.
7 Ev 203 [DfES] Back
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Ev 204 [DfES] Back
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