Each year government departments and agencies spend in the region of £3 billion on new buildings and major refurbishments. The government has set estate-wide sustainability standards for the construction and refurbishment of its buildings.

Much remains to be done across government to meet these standards. Mandatory environmental assessments were carried out in only 35% of new builds and 18% of major refurbishment projects in 2005-06, and only 9% of projects could be shown to meet the required environmental standards. Departmental uptake of mandatory "Quick Wins", products pre-assessed to be more sustainable, was limited. Monitoring against estate-wide operational sustainability targets does not set out clearly performance against Quick Wins or sustainability targets for individual projects. Departments did not undertake post-occupancy evaluations, which can be an effective way of identifying improvements, and did not carry out whole life costing which is necessary if the most sustainable option is to be chosen.

Several initiatives are being pursued to encourage the take-up of sustainable options and change the perception of conflict between sustainability and budgetary constraints. Guidance on whole life costing has already been clarified, emphasising that wider benefits form part of that assessment. The development of cross-departmental common contracts, such as the recent "green tariff" contract for energy, offers new opportunities to departments to obtain environmental benefits. There are also plans to improve the Gateway process to take full account of environmental objectives at an earlier stage. The Property Benchmarking Programme, which will collect estate-wide information, is also expected to assist in future performance monitoring.

On the basis of a report by the Comptroller and Auditor General,[1] the Committee took evidence from the Office of Government Commerce and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the reasons for the limited progress made to date and the prospects for improvement.