Abstract

Leeds Hospitals of the Future will provide a new home for Leeds Children’s Hospital, additional capacity for adult acute services, resolving several wider circulatory issues, and establishing the new healthcare facilities at the centre of a new Innovation Village.

The Trust board embraced the NHS Net Zero Building Standard while still in its earliest beta form and thus informed the development of the design from those early stages. Although others were grappling with that same nebulous draft advice and its interface with concurrent regulatory and advisory guidance – for instance, around modern methods of construction or evolving building regulations – few had to contend with the challenges of doing so for such a tall building on an extremely constrained city centre site.

This is a particularly important typology, given that such an urban location addresses the many secondary sustainability issues around staff, patient and visitor transportation to and from hospitals that will necessarily inform sustainable practice for the NHS as it transitions to a low-carbon future. City centre locations can also attract a higher degree of scrutiny in terms of massing, appearance and material quality, so it becomes imperative to meet the demands of the standard without detriment to architectural ambition.

We will seek to articulate the lessons that we’ve learnt through this journey, not only to help others embarking on similar paths but also to raise some wider and important questions about the evolution of the Net Zero Building Standard through its forthcoming, self-mandated revisions.