BREEAM at planning: scheme version, rating and condition

A planning condition requiring BREEAM Excellent is a commitment to a certificate, not to an aspiration. Once that wording is on the decision notice the scheme has to be registered with the Building Research Establishment, assessed by a licensed assessor against a named version of the scheme, and certified at post-construction stage before the condition can be discharged. The version in force when you register is the version you are assessed against, which is why registration timing matters more than most design teams realise.

Get the wording and the registration right at the start and the rating costs what the pre-assessment said. Get them wrong and the difference lands on the contractor in year two.

What a pre-assessment is and is not

A BREEAM Pre-Assessment is an estimate of the credits a scheme is likely to achieve, prepared at design stage and presented as a tracker showing credits targeted, credits at risk and credits excluded. It is the document councils normally ask for at application stage, and it is what supports a claim that a rating is achievable.

It is not a certificate. Nothing is certified until the scheme is registered and an assessment is submitted to the certification body, and the two stages that produce certificates are the design stage assessment, giving an interim certificate, and the post-construction review, giving the final one. A planning condition that requires evidence of the rating without saying which certificate it means creates an argument for later.

The tracker should carry a margin. Targeting exactly the threshold score for a rating leaves no room for a credit that falls away during construction, and credits do fall away: a specification substitution, a subcontractor who cannot produce the evidence, a site management record nobody kept. Two to four points of headroom above the threshold is a reasonable working assumption for a scheme with ordinary risks.

Choosing the scheme version and the registration date

BRE publishes the current version of BREEAM UK New Construction alongside transition arrangements for schemes registered under an earlier version. Those arrangements set out how long a registration remains valid and when a project must move to the current version, so check them on the BRE and BREEAM sites at the point of decision rather than relying on what was true on the last job.

Two practical consequences follow. Registering early fixes the version, which helps a long programme where a new version would otherwise change the credit criteria midway. And a registration that lapses because the project stalled may have to be made again under whatever version is then current, which can shift the score materially.

So put the version and the registration date into the condition wording. A condition requiring a rating "under the version of the scheme applicable at the date of registration" is dischargeable. A condition requiring a rating with no version named invites the authority to apply the version current at the time the evidence is submitted.

Which credits the planning design decides

Some credits are settled by decisions the planning application has already made, and no value engineering later can recover them.

Site selection and the ecological value of the land are fixed by the red line. Public transport accessibility, cycle provision and proximity to amenities are fixed by location and by the approved site plan. Surface water run-off performance is fixed by the drainage strategy approved with the permission. Daylight to occupied spaces is fixed by the massing and the window sizes on the approved elevations. The energy performance of the fabric and the services is shaped by the Energy Statement and by whatever the permission conditioned.

Everything else, including materials, waste, water fittings, commissioning, aftercare and much of the health and wellbeing section, remains open during detailed design and construction. The practical implication is that a pre-assessment prepared after the planning drawings are fixed cannot change the credits in the first group. It can only report them.

Run the pre-assessment during the design, not after it. A scheme that needs three transport credits it cannot get because of where it is has to find them somewhere else, and finding them late is expensive.

Mandatory minimum standards at each rating

BREEAM ratings are awarded on a percentage score, and the thresholds have been stable for a long time.

The score is only half the test. Each rating level also carries mandatory minimum standards in named issues, covering areas such as energy performance, water consumption, construction site management, waste and commissioning. Miss one of those minimum standards and the rating is capped regardless of the overall percentage, which is the way most schemes that fail actually fail.

Check the minimum standards for the target rating at the outset and mark them on the tracker as non-negotiable. They tend to fall on the contractor rather than the designer, so they belong in the employer's requirements and the preliminaries rather than in a consultant's report nobody on site reads.

Wording a condition you can discharge

Ask for the condition to name five things. The rating. The scheme and version, or a reference to the version applicable at registration. The stage at which each piece of evidence is due, typically a design stage certificate before the superstructure and a post-construction certificate within a stated period after practical completion. Which building or phase the rating applies to, where a scheme has several. And a fallback where the target proves unachievable for reasons outside the applicant's control, usually a requirement to submit a statement explaining the shortfall and the compensating measures.

That fallback is the clause worth fighting for. Without it, a scheme that lands two points short has breached a condition with no route to compliance, and the only remedies are a variation of the condition or an enforcement conversation.

On a phased development, tie the rating to each phase separately and set the trigger by reference to that phase's completion. A single condition covering a whole site creates a position where the last plot can breach a condition attached to the first. The same sequencing logic applies to energy masterplanning across a phased site.

Post-construction review and evidence

The post-construction review is an evidence exercise, and the evidence has to have been collected while the work was happening. Nothing can be reconstructed afterwards.

1. Appoint the assessor before the contractor is appointed, so the evidence requirements sit in the tender documents.
2. Issue the assessor's evidence schedule to the contractor as a contract document, with the responsible party named against each item.
3. Collect site management records, waste returns and commissioning records as they are produced, monthly rather than at completion.
4. Record product specifications and any substitutions at the point the substitution is approved, with responsible sourcing certification attached.
5. Book the assessor's site visits into the programme rather than requesting them at short notice.
6. Submit for post-construction certification promptly after practical completion, because the condition trigger usually runs from that date.

The commonest failure at this stage is responsible sourcing evidence for materials, because it depends on certification held by suppliers several steps down the chain and it cannot be obtained retrospectively for material already in the building.

Where a rating commitment costs more than expected

Three places, in order of frequency.

Energy and water minimum standards drive plant and fittings specifications that a contractor priced generically. Responsible sourcing and material credits constrain the supply chain, which removes the lowest cost substitution options. And site management credits require a level of record keeping and community engagement that a small contractor may not have run before, which shows up as a claim rather than as a line in the tender.

The honest position is that the incremental cost of moving from Very Good to Excellent varies widely by building type and site, and anyone quoting a single percentage figure for it is guessing. Price it for the actual scheme, with the assessor and the cost consultant in the same meeting, before the rating goes into a planning condition. Where embodied carbon is also being assessed, a Whole Life Carbon Assessment shares much of the same material data and is worth commissioning at the same time, as is the Sustainability Statement that usually accompanies the application.

Browse all 66 PlanScope report types and start a draft, then have the BREEAM tracker prepared by a licensed assessor.

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