A new UK Green Building Council (UK-GBC) task group has met for the first time in a bid to cut costs and improve delivery of district heating and other types of sustainable community infrastructure.
Run in partnership with the Zero Carbon Hub, the group of built envionment experts will produce guidance on the legal arrangements for delivering Sustainable Community Infrastructure (SCI). The work is supported by the NHBC Foundation, E.ON and Berkeley Group.
Speaking ahead of the first meeting, Paul King, chief executive of the UK-GBC said:
'In order for developers, utilities and local authorities to rise to the challenge of delivering community scale infrastructure, we need better guidance and standardised arrangements on the legal complexities. This new Task Group will help power up the community infrastructure revolution that the UK needs to reduce emissions from our built environment.'
Neil Jefferson, chief executive of Zero Carbon Hub & Advisory Board member NHBC Foundation, added: 'There will be an increased reliance on community and district energy solutions to serve developments of new low and zero carbon homes, certainly those built to greater densities.
'The need to have a suite of 'off the shelf' legal and administrative frameworks to speed deployment and reduce costs is a key deliverable on the critical path towards 2016 and the work of this Task Group is vitally important.'
The Legal Frameworks for Sustainable Community Infrastructure Task Group page is now available on the UK-GBC website. http://www.ukgbc.org/site/taskgroups/info?id=13