The new £11.5m exhibition halls at Harrogate International Centre (HIC) have received the highest five star ranking from BREEAM, the world’s leading design and assessment method for sustainable buildings.
The Centre’s new bespoke exhibition halls scored an ‘outstanding’ 87.98 per cent in this recent assessment.
Council Leader and Chair of the HIC Board, Councillor Anthony Alton, said from the outset the council aimed to achieve the BREEAM score of excellent (70 per cent) for these new exhibitions halls, so to have actually received a score of outstanding at nearly 88 per cent is a credit to all involved.
Council Leader and Chair of the HIC Board, Councillor Anthony Alton added:
Like many businesses, we are faced with crippling taxes if we exceed the government’s restrictions on energy use. So attaining a high level of sustainability was part and parcel of the design concept and contract.
We are all much more conscious about our responsibility to save energy. Our motivation may be to reduce our bills but we also want to protect the environment and limit our carbon emissions. New technology is helping us do that.
The BREEAM assessment uses recognised measures on performance, which is set against established benchmarks to evaluate a building’s design, but the assessors created a unique assessment for HIC’s new build.
Acting Director of HIC, Simon Kent welcomed this tailored approach.
Simon Kent said:
These exhibition halls are unique to our centre and therefore needed a bespoke approach. In an industry that is heavy on energy, this is another selling point for us. People who bring their business to the centre are expected to do all they can to off-set their energy use and it is only right and proper that they can see we are acting responsibly too.
