Appleyards is delighted to announce that Lion House, based in Alnwick, Northumberland, has received two prestigious sustainability awards. Appleyards project managed the development of Lion House.

In September 2008, Lion House was named the most environmentally friendly office building certified by BREEAM in 2008. And, in October, the project was named Sustainable Achievement of the Year at the Office Development Awards, organised by Property Week magazine in association with the Office Agents Society.

Lion House received a score of 81.5%, under the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM), the world’s leading environmental benchmarking tool for the built environment. BREEAM award-winning buildings must excel in each of the environmental categories assessed and so represent a holistic approach to delivering environmental sustainability.

The building, which is due for completion in late 2008, is occupied by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and will be the first government building to have the capacity to be carbon neutral in operational terms.

Lion House has achieved exemplary standards of sustainability and environmental performance throughout its design and construction phases, and has the capacity to be equally sustainable when occupied, thereby minimising any environmental impact throughout the building’s lifetime.

Lion House will be one of the UK’s first carbon reducing buildings, generating sufficient energy from carbon-free resources to more than offset the emissions produced from conventional energy use.

It has achieved its award-winning status by combining a number of renewable energy sources including photovoltaics, a biomass heating system, solar thermal hot water generation and wind turbines. On-site electricity generation helps deliver a 108.6% reduction of carbon emissions at the building. The biomass plant reduces gas consumption by 46%, saving 2,400kg CO² per year ­– equivalent to the emissions produced by an average family car driving from London to Cape Town.

Sustainable materials have been used throughout the building, and all the major construction elements including the roof, frame, external walls, floors and foundations, doors and windows were sourced in-line with BREEAM 2006 guidelines. Mains water consumption has been minimised through the selection of low water use fittings and a rainwater harvesting system.

The project was developed via extensive collaboration with users and stakeholders, through workshops, newsletters, forums, an intranet and surveys, to ensure awareness and appreciation of the building’s environmental benefits and how they can help empower the staff working in the building.

In order to ensure that the actual benefits are delivered and the facilities are used to their fullest potential, Appleyards hopes to introduce a realisation and measurement plan to assess continually how the building is performing and to inform and reassure the people working there that targets are being met.

Lion House has been designed so that its DEFRA staff will have complete operational control of their environment – screens provide users with real time information on the performance of the building’s technologies and a traffic light system will help users decide how to keep the building on track to achieve carbon neutrality.

Colin Morrell, CEO of Appleyards, commented:

"We are proud at Appleyards to be delivering the first ever government carbon neutral office building and to have won two such prestigious awards. Our work on Lion House involves using the very diverse range of consultancy skills we have, both in the built environment and more broadly in delivering organisational change. Reducing carbon emissions is a critical challenge for the UK to improve the quality of life for us all and for future generations and we are delighted to be playing a role in this."