Legal & General launches "Office Occupiers' Guide to Sustainability" as Mayor recognises work with tenants in the battle against climate change

In the latest of its market leading sustainability initiatives, Legal & General Property (“LGP” / the “Company”) has produced the ‘Office Occupiers’ Guide’ to sustainable property, through which it aims to arm its office tenants with the necessary understanding of environmental impact of property, and a toolkit to implement change.

The guide represents just one of many substantial commitments to the green agenda that the Company has made over the past 12 months and for which it has been receiving growing recognition. This commitment was recognised last month when LGP received two highly coveted Gold awards at the Mayor of London’s Green Awards 2010, in conjunction with the Better Buildings Partnership (“BBP”). These were the Building Improver Award, for its work at 99 Gresham Street, and the Green Portfolio Award.

As one of the largest UK institutional property fund managers, with over £8.7bn of property assets under management, LGP is very serious about its role in minimising the impact of the built environment and setting an example of best practice for other property owners and managers. The Company has already broken new ground by being the first investment management firm to provide a six-month training course on sustainable property investment, compulsory for all property fund managers and rolled out to partners and agents, and has now been made available to the rest of the industry. Now, through the Office Occupiers’ Guide it plans to take this sustainability awareness a step further by putting into action a sustainability strategy for each building within its portfolio.

Inspiring occupiers to accept that they have an important part to play in carbon reduction and educating them on the real and significant cost savings that can be achieved through simple but critical changes to the running of a property, the guide aims to forge a link between landlords and tenants in tackling change. It is broken down into seven categories of sustainable action, namely waste management, energy, buying goods and services, paper, water, travel, and corporate and social responsibility. The guide also highlights works at Gresham Street as a case study of the successes that can be achieved. Culminating in a list of next steps, the guide recommends establishing a Building Management Committee, through which LGP’s representative managing agents can work together with its tenants to create bespoke sustainability action plans for each building and then put these cost-savings and energy efficiencies into motion.

Bill Hughes, Managing Director of Legal & General Property, comments:

“We understand that the sustainable performance of our buildings will play a significant role in shaping our future property investment portfolio and that there is now a real need to work together as an industry to bring about this change. We are working collaboratively with tenants and partners to address the very serious issues of climate change, and we now intend to roll this out across our entire portfolio and produce the substantial results that we know are within reach of our sector.

“The Mayor’s prestigious awards demonstrate significant external recognition for all that we have been doing over the past year and specifically our continued commitment to minimising our impact on the built environment, both through our approach to new development and through tackling our existing properties and mindsets.”

ENDS.