Review of Progress in Securing Sustainability through Major Applications

Through robust application of planning policies, Islington Council seeks to achieve the highest practicable levels of environmental performance in buildings and other built structures. In order to assess what progress we have been making in securing sustainability measures on major planning applications a baseline study was undertaken to identify and quantify the measures that have been secured through planning between 1 March 2007 and the end of March 2009.

The findings of this study are summarised in a report which can be downloaded using the link at the bottom of this page.

Key findings from the study are:

• BREEAM Excellent, the most widely sought sustainable building standard, was conditioned (by planning officers) or proposed (in the application) on 47% of certifiable elements of all approved major applications for permanent new or refurbished buildings; there was a broad trend of increasing proportions of applications aiming to achieve both BREEAM Excellent and Code level 4 across the study period.
• Fourteen developments, or 21% of all major applications for permanent new or refurbished buildings approved in the study period, included CHP. There was no clear trend in uptake of this technology across the study period.
• Forty-three per cent of approved applications for permanent new or refurbished buildings in the study period that committed to achieve a target percentage CO2 reduction through renewables committed to provide a 20% CO2 reduction through renewables. There has been a consistent improvement in the average CO2 reduction through renewables secured across the study period, climbing steadily closer to the London Plan policy 4A.7 target of a 20% CO2 reduction through renewables.
• Biomass was the most popular form of renewable technology, proposed/conditioned on almost a quarter of applications (23.9%), followed by ground source heat pumps (GSHP), solar hot water (SHW) and solar PV.
• Forty-two developments, or 63% of all major applications for permanent new or refurbished buildings approved between 1st March 2007 and the end of March 2009, committed to provide green roofs. Available data indicated this equates to over 12,000 square metres of green roof.
• After green roofs, the most popular other form of sustainable urban drainage conditioned or proposed was rain water harvesting.
• Based on available data, 40 out of 67 applications (59.7%) were ‘car-free’. In the last six months (October 2008 to end of March 2009), 10 developments were known to be ‘car-free’ out of 13 approved major schemes, or 77% or schemes, indicating that in the most recent months the Council has had substantial success in securing ‘car-free’ schemes.