GVA Grimley, JM Architects and the British Property Federation (BPF) have released dates for their new joint green offices seminar programme in October.

The seminars, called Old Buildings, New Futures, will take place throughout October at the following locations: Birmingham; Manchester; London and Edinburgh.

Old Buildings, New Futures, aimed at landlords and developers, will demonstrate the way and speed at which building regulations are changing and how this is creating a gap between building performance in existing stock and new build. The seminars will also address the effective and sustainable refurbishment of existing office buildings in order to increase value and reduce operating costs.


In addition, the BPF will be speaking about their own landlord's energy statement and tenant's energy review (LES-TER) which allows owners and occupiers to measure their energy use, producing information that will be needed for DECs once they apply to all buildings.

Simon Reynolds from GVA Grimley and Roger Burton of JM Architects, who will be chairing the seminars said: "One of the issues for older buildings is that, unless reasonable scale change is taken, as defined in Building Regs L2Bm, there is no reason for landlords to do anything other than the minimum requirement. However, due to the speed at which regulations are changing, there is a danger that the gap between new builds and existing stock will widen and consequently owners of existing buildings will begin to operate in a secondary market, which will quickly begin to have a serious affect on the value of the building."

For further information visit: www.gvagrimley.co.uk/sustainability

(CD/JM)