St Dunstan’s College, Catford, south-east London, is delighted to reveal it has achieved a BREEAM excellent rating for the new Junior School and STEM building following a sustainability assessment.
The assessment, carried out by Blewburton Limited, scored the College’s new developments on areas including health and wellbeing, energy, transport, water, land use and ecology.
Speaking about the assessment, St Dunstan’s Bursar, Mrs Clair Wilkins explained: ‘We are thrilled to have received our excellent BREEAM rating. Everyone involved in the project, including our architects Bond Bryan, the main contractor Willmott Dixon and Lewisham Council, worked extremely hard to achieve this important rating.
‘When planning the new developments, high priority was given to more sustainable construction methods, which were used to reduce the environmental impact, both during construction and for the life of the building after completion. Sustainable methods included brick slip cladding, solar panels, intelligent BMS systems and LED lighting.’
The Junior School and STEM buildings, which officially opened in 2021, are the most significant developments on the school grounds since 1888. The College’s forward-thinking approach is now matched by modern, bright and inspirational facilities. The buildings include state-of-the-art classrooms, science laboratories, and design and engineering workshops.
Alongside the new buildings, the College has added a woodland classroom for Junior School pupils, a Senior School ecology pond and introduced new areas on the school grounds for additional wild areas and wildflowers to increase biodiversity. More than 70 trees will also be planted on the College’s two sites to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee year.
The Sustainability Committee, led by Mrs Wilkins, has also introduced initiatives such as plastic-free zones which includes the refectory, a predominantly plant-based offer at lunch and installed a large number of cycle racks to encourage more students and staff to travel sustainably to school.
BREEAM is ‘an international scheme that provides independent third-party certification of the assessment of the sustainability performance of individual buildings, communities and infrastructure projects.’
