Top BREEAM award goes to the dogs

A dogs home in Shropshire and a prison building in south-east London have been named among the most sustainable buildings ever certified at the Ecobuild conference.

The winners of the latest BREEAM awards all achieved at least an “excellent” rating and excelled in every environmental category within the accreditation, from energy to ecology.

In particular, the Dogs Trust’s Shrewsbury Rehoming Centre - which won the “bespoke” category - gained the highestBREEAM post-construction score ever awarded.

Close behind was “The Green” student accommodation at the University of Bradford, which earned innovation credits for providing real-time energy-use and water-use displays to every student flat.

Elsewhere in the awards, the Living Unit at HMP Thameside, formerly Belmarsh West Prison, became the first prison building to achieve BREEAM “outstanding” classification.

Carol Atkinson, chief executive of BRE Global - which manages BREEAM - said the winning buildings were “testament to the outstanding skill and determination” of the building owners, developers, project teams and assessors.

“We believe that one of the reasons for their commitment is that more and more clients and project teams are now equating high BREEAM ratings with better building performance,” she said.

All of the award-winning buildings notched up a BREEAM score higher than 70%. The Dogs Trust and the University of Bradford’s student accommodation, achieved scores of above 94%.