With thanks to Sarah Cox – Partner, Carter Jonas (Leeds) – for sharing her insight with Hospital Hub…
The climate crisis is a potential health crisis. And yet healthcare, if only due to the substantial construction, transport and heating / air condition emissions that such a large organisation generates, is a not insignificant contributor to climate change. The NHS, according to its own sources, is responsible for 5% of the UK’s carbon emissions. As the then former of NHS England admitted, health services jointly contribute the same level of emissions as the country currently ranked as the world’s fifth-largest emitter.
Achieving net zero is a considerable undertaking for an organisation as large as the NHS, especially taking into account funding and other constraints. But in its policy document Delivering a ‘Net Zero’ National Health Service, the NHS has committed to doing so by 2040 and is already making significant progress.
Earlier this year, plans for what is believed to be the UK’s greenest hospital were approved. The new Velindre Cancer Centre in Cardiff utilises low embodied carbon and bio-based materials that support a circular economy and promote health and wellbeing. The centre will be all-electric and is manufacturing components off-site to reduce site waste and minimise transportation. Its landscape strategy is to keep the site as wild as possible by retaining existing habitats and creating new habitats alongside new landscaped spaces such as an orchards and a community kitchen garden.
It was encouraging, too, to see plans to power Torbay Hospital with a £3.1m solar park approved last May. The 3.9 hectares of solar panels will provide 3.2 megawatt peak of power and will last for approximately 25 years.
Carter Jonas works for Leeds Community Healthcare NHS Trust. Sustainability is at the heart of the Trust’s built environment strategy, which aims to achieve net zero operational carbon and minimal embedded carbon, conservation of resources and nature-based design solutions.
Construction is a major contributor to emissions, accounting, according to the 2019 Global Status Report for Buildings and Construction, for almost 40% of CO2 emissions. And so, we are pleased to work with the NHS on gaining planning consent for construction projects which have lower emissions rates. We have worked with both Leeds and other hospital trusts to create new community diagnostic centres which use modular construction, reducing emissions by approximately 54%.
In terms of sustainability, another important factor of community diagnostic centres is that they are planned to integrate effectively into a neighbourhood. A consideration in the built environment world post Covid has been to respond to an increased awareness of community. And as some high streets declined in 2020 through lack of footfall, changes to the planning use classes were made to facilitate the change of use from one high street use to another.
Class E came into use on in September 2020. It incorporates, under the term ‘commercial, business and services’, a broad range of previously standalone use classes including A1-A3 (retail, food and drink and financial and professional services), B1 (office space), parts of D1 (including clinics, health centres, creches, day nurseries, and day centres) and D2 (gyms and most indoor recreations). Any changes between these uses now no longer requires a full planning application. So increasingly, healthcare facilities are occupying previously under-utilised retail units on high streets and in shopping centres which provides a local amenity, benefits community development and can help regenerate high streets – 
with the added benefit of freeing up much-needed space in hospitals.
Even within planning and development alone, the potential for change in the NHS is considerable. And with the drive to achieve net zero by 2040 so strongly embedded in NHS thinking, this together with change through other aspects of the NHS’ output has, and will continue to, help us tackle climate change.
