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News Release from: Chartered Institute of Building [CIOB] | Subject: Sustainable procurement plan
Edited by the Buildingtalk Editorial
Team on 26 October 2005
Need for sustainable procurement plan
Public sector told it must change its ways to pursue sustainable procurement plan.
While the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) is preparing to publish the United Kingdom's new Code for Sustainable Building, the Department of the Environment (Defra) in collaboration with the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) is promoting the campaign for sustainable procurement in the public sector, launched earlier this year as part of the Prime Minister's strategy for a sustainable future In that document, Mr Blair depicted the United Kingdom as on a clear path to a low carbon economy
This article was originally published on Buildingtalk on 12 Mar 2004 at 8.00am (UK)
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"Our task now," he said, "is to deliver at home and find ways to get international agreement through the G8 and other forums to strengthen the global effort to tackle climate change." Just as we have a Sustainable Building Task Group to advise the Government on the Code for Sustainable Building, we now have a Sustainable Procurement Task Force, fortunately for the industry led by someone it knows well, Sir Neville Sims, a chartered civil engineer until recently chairman of Carillion plc and prior to that group chief executive and deputy chairman of Tarmac.
Sir Neville and his colleagues, who represent a broad spread of British industry, are charged with the task of producing an action plan to realise the aims of this policy.
Defra and OGC brought representatives of central and local government to the Queen Elizabeth conference centre on 19th October 2005 to hear more about the scope and intentions of this plan, which taking the public sector as a whole will cover an area of procurement amounting to an astonishing GBP125 billion annually.
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As Sir Neville explained, the government wants the United Kingdom to be a leader in sustainable procurement in the European Union by 2009.
In fact, the Prime Minister wants us to be the leader in sustainable development generally - and is putting on the pressure to secure this.
The sustainable procurement task force is well aware that everyone will need to speed up the rate of implementation if the 2009 dateline is to be reached.
Similar pressure is being applied in the United Kingdom for implementation of the European Directive on Energy Performance of Buildings, about which the ODPM Housing and Planning Minister Yvette Cooper was questioned in the House of Commons at about the same time as Elliot Morley, Minister of State for the Environment, was expounding Defra's policies to the sustainable procurement conference.
In brief, he said, the government wants local authorities, government departments, offices and agencies to change the way they spend that GBP125 billion to make it more sustainable.
But, he said, we cannot expect to have an impact on this expenditure if the public sector is not prepared to change patterns of consumption and production.
The people in central government who are driving forward these programmes and policies are keenly aware of the barriers that stand in the way of sustainable development.
Indeed, at the sustainable procurement conference workshops, OGC was asking the local authority and government agency delegates how they would identify these barriers.
Apart from the ever-present one of inertia, there was fairly wide agreement that forms of democratic government, in which decisions are influenced primarily by the votes they secure and last of all by economies in public expenditure, have barriers to sustainable procurement built in.
However, Sir Neville Simms is confident that government will be playing a major role in stimulating the production of innovative and sustainable answers to the challenge of sustainability.
The action plan will be there primarily to ensure more efficient use of public resources.
But at the same time, it must avoid adverse environmental impacts and produce more cost effective and sustainable options.
Above all, it needs to set out means whereby government can demonstrate how seriously the public sector must regard the issue of sustainable development.
With the overall theme of leading by example, the action plan is due to be out by April 2006.
But as OGC is careful to point out, though we have a task force in place and a strong lead from the government, there still needs to be clarity about the concept of sustainable procurement, as many people seem unclear about what it is and what strategy is needed to define sustainable development priorities for procurement.
That much was apparent at the conference.
Martin Sykes, the OGC executive director, believes there is scope to pursue sustainable procurement under both value-for-money policy and European Union rules.
But, he says, these issues must be considered as early as possible in the procurement process.
"Sustainable procurement and efficient procurement should be mutually reinforcing".
The Achieving Excellence guide No.11 released by OGC in May gives the latest guidance on sustainable development in construction projects.
The new Part L building regulations are of course part of the drive for sustainable development.
In the House of Commons on the same day as the conference Yvette Cooper, Minister for Housing and Planning, confirmed to Sir Robert Smith (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) that Part L will cover improvements to new buildings.
Sir Robert asked what factors influenced the ODPM's decision to limit the revised Part L to extensions over 1,000 sq m.
The same decision excludes existing buildings from the Part L regulations, again confirmed when Ms.
Cooper said that existing buildings would be covered by the new review announced in September.
The Minister acknowledged that Sir Robert had made a wider point about the impact on existing buildings, in that below the 1,000 sq m limit there would be no requirement for consequential work to the original building in line with the requirements of the new Part L.
But she insisted that the overall impact of the changes announced on 13th September 2005 while Parliament was in recess would yield a 40 per cent improvement in the energy efficiency of the buildings to which they applied.
"That is a big impact", she said, "and it should be welcomed".
"It is right that we should go further and we are looking into a wider review of existing buildings, as a whole range of measures need to be taken into account - not just regulations but incentives and issues such as Home Information Packs".
Asked why the announcement of these changes was made while the House of Commons was in recess, Ms.
Cooper said that it had been thought important to introduce the details about the new Part L regulations then because the building industry has to implement them as from April next year and needed time to prepare.
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