The Home Quality Mark (HQM) has just been replaced by the BREEAM UK New Construction: Residential assessment (BREEAM UKNCR), ensuring high environmental, social and economic standards in planning and construction.

BREEAM is an important environmental, social and economic assessment of a building’s sustainability performance.

A BREEAM pre-assessment supports a planning submission, providing the opportunity to demonstrate sustainability standards set by the National Planning Policy Framework and the Local Core Strategy. A high BREEAM rating demonstrates a project’s commitment to the environment, giving confidence to investors and institutions.

EAL Consult offers BREEAM Pre-assessments for planning applications for commercial, domestic, new-build or re-fit buildings. The three key elements are:

• Environmental: Projections of carbon emissions, improvements in resource efficiency, protection of biodiversity, and implementation of circular design principles.
• Social: How the project is supporting occupant health, wellbeing, and quality of life, highlighting pollution control, daylight, thermal comfort, noise, and access to green spaces.
• Economic: Demonstrating efficient use of materials, resilient, future-ready buildings that are low-cost to run and adaptable over time.

BREEAM is scored against a nine-point environmental assessment.  These scores are added together to produce a single overall rating – Pass, Good, Very Good, Excellent or Outstanding.

It is essential to engage in this process at the planning stage of your project to ensure swift compliance and avoid unnecesary costs at the construction stage.