Design can lower costs of sustainable schools

An environmentally-friendly BREEAM rating can be achieved at little or no extra cost to schools, a new report claims.

The BRE Trust report ‘Putting a Price on Sustainable Schools’ shows many sustainability measures to get the rating can be implemented at little or no cost.

But it stresses that sustainability must be embedded into the design of the school from the outset.

Report author Anna Surgenor, of BRE Global, said the report dispelled the myth that sustainable initiatives were always more expensive to implement.

She said: “In some cases initial capital costs are higher but procuring a sustainable school can result in significant savings in energy, water bills and other operational costs.”