BREEAM pre-assessment: the credits you cannot trade away

A BREEAM pre-assessment submitted with a planning application exists to answer one question: can this building reach the rating the local plan policy asks for. The score alone does not answer it. Every rating from Pass upwards carries a set of minimum standards, and those are the mandatory credits in a BREEAM pre-assessment that cannot be traded away however many points the scheme collects elsewhere.

That distinction is where pre-assessments go wrong. A tracker showing 71 per cent against a target of Excellent looks comfortable until someone notices that a minimum standard in the energy or water section has not been met, at which point the certified rating drops a level and the condition attached to the permission is breached.

What the pre-assessment has to do at planning stage

At application stage nobody is certifying anything. The pre-assessment is a predictive exercise: a credit by credit statement of what the design is expected to achieve, who is responsible for each credit, and what evidence will be needed later.

A case officer is reading it for three things. Does the stated target match the policy requirement. Is the predicted score high enough to carry a sensible margin above the rating threshold. And are the credits being claimed ones that the planning permission itself makes possible, rather than ones that depend on decisions already closed off by the layout.

The margin matters more than the headline. A scheme predicted at one percentage point above a threshold is a scheme that will fail at design stage, because credits move in both directions as the design develops and most of the early movement is downward.

Rating levels and the minimum standards attached to them

The rating bands are fixed percentages of the weighted score, and they are the same across the current UK New Construction scheme: Pass at 30 per cent, Good at 45, Very Good at 55, Excellent at 70 and Outstanding at 85. Anything below 30 per cent is Unclassified.

Sitting alongside those bands is a table of minimum standards. It lists particular credits and says how many of them have to be achieved before a given rating can be awarded, regardless of total score. The number of mandatory items grows as the rating rises, which is why the step from Very Good to Excellent is harder than the 15 percentage points suggests.

The credits carrying minimum standards fall in predictable places: construction site management, energy performance and energy monitoring, water consumption and water monitoring, responsible sourcing of materials, construction and operational waste, and the management of ecological impact. Check the version of the scheme manual that applies to your project, because the minimum standards table changes between scheme versions and the applicable version is fixed by the registration date rather than by the date you write the report.

The credits that are fixed at your target rating

Three of the mandatory areas have real design consequences and they are worth pulling out early.

Energy performance sets a floor below which the building cannot go, and it is assessed through the scheme's own energy modelling rather than through the compliance calculation you submit with an Energy Statement. The two exercises share inputs and reach different answers, so run them together.

Water consumption carries a minimum at the higher ratings, which fixes sanitaryware specification. That is a low cost credit to secure at design stage and an expensive one to retrofit once a fit-out contract is let.

Construction site management is the one that catches schemes after planning. It depends on the contractor's procedures and on monitoring that has to happen during the build, so it cannot be bought back at post-construction stage if nobody set it up. Where the client has not appointed a contractor at application stage, say so in the pre-assessment and record the credit as at risk rather than as achieved.

Credits already decided by the site and the massing

A pre-assessment written after the layout is frozen is partly a record of credits that have already been lost.

Transport credits turn on the accessibility index of the site and on cycle parking numbers, both of which are set by the application drawings. Land use and ecology credits depend on whether the site is previously developed and on what survey work was done before the design started, which is why an ecology appraisal commissioned late almost always costs credits. Materials credits depend on structural choices, and reuse of existing structure is worth claiming where it exists, which overlaps directly with the pre-redevelopment audit of material reuse and with a Whole Life Carbon Assessment if one is required.

Health and wellbeing credits for daylight are the ones most often written off silently. They depend on floor depths, glazing ratios and separation distances fixed by the massing, and once a deep plan is consented those credits are gone.

Evidence at pre-assessment against post-construction

The evidence standard at each stage differs sharply, and a pre-assessment that pretends otherwise sets up a failure later.

At pre-assessment, a credit can rest on a design intent statement, a preliminary calculation or a specification clause. At design stage certification, the assessor needs drawings, calculations and specifications issued for construction. At post-construction, the assessor needs as-built evidence: commissioning records, delivery notes, site monitoring data and photographs.

Three categories of credit tend to be lost between those stages. Credits depending on monitoring during construction, which cannot be recreated afterwards. Credits depending on responsible sourcing certificates, which have to be collected as materials arrive. And credits depending on commissioning and handover documentation, which slip when a project finishes in a hurry.

An honest pre-assessment labels each credit as targeted, likely or at risk, and names the party responsible. That is also the document a planning officer can rely on when drafting a condition.

Conditioning a rating and proving it later

Councils normally secure a BREEAM rating by condition rather than by obligation. A workable condition has three parts: submission of a design stage certificate before works start above ground level, submission of a post-construction certificate before first occupation, and the rating stated as a minimum rather than as a target.

Two drafting points are worth raising with the case officer before the decision is issued. A condition requiring certification by a named scheme version can become impossible to comply with if the scheme version is withdrawn before the building is registered. And a condition requiring the post-construction certificate before occupation, on a building let in phases, needs a mechanism for partial occupation or it will be breached on day one.

Where the rating later proves unachievable for reasons outside the applicant's control, the route is an application to vary the condition rather than quiet non-compliance, and the evidence for that application is the credit tracker showing where the shortfall arose.

Who can prepare and certify the assessment

Anyone can produce a credit tracker. Only a licensed assessor can register a project and issue a certified rating, and only the scheme operator awards the certificate. Councils expect a suitably qualified author for the pre-assessment, and professional review is strongly advised before submission, because a pre-assessment that overstates the achievable rating causes problems at the point the condition bites rather than at the point the application is decided.

For specialist technical reports, qualified professional input may be required. A BREEAM Pre-Assessment drafted in advance gives the assessor a structured starting point and a record of which credits the design team has already accepted responsibility for.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports your scheme is likely to need alongside the pre-assessment.

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