A new headteacher means a new focus

Andy Burnham’s arrival marks a clear pivot in political philosophy – a whole new school development plan with a fresh set of expectations on the noticeboard. This government:

• Prioritises public impact and visible interventions
• Sees housing as an essential service
• Champions devolved power, and local leadership.
• Frames net zero through affordability

For our sector, that means demonstrating how the built environment can revive places, reduce bills, create jobs, and strengthen local resilience. Fortunately, UKGBC and our members have already done the homework, and the critical thinking. We’ve been preparing the revision guides, the worked examples, and the model answers that this new government will need.

The UK built environment is directly responsible for 25% of the UK’s carbon emissions. UKGBC’s Whole Life Carbon Roadmap Progress Report published in March this year highlights the shortfall in reductions. Only a 14% decrease in carbon emissions is being achieved compared to the required 24% to achieve net zero by 2050, with embodied carbon emissions having risen since 2018.

The UK ‘’ (NZCBS) was released in March, and the UKGBC’s ‘Whole Life Carbon Framework’ was published in May. Both of these expand on the RICS 2023 standard ‘’, but in different ways.

The RICS Standard, of which I was lead author, is mostly technical and covers assessment methodology, i.e. how do you actually calculate both operational and embodied emissions and then report them. This standard is effectively the foundation on which the other two publications are built. The NZCBS sets out ‘Limits’ (targets) for the carbon performance of buildings post completion. The UKGBC’s Whole Life Carbon Framework provides practical advice on how to actually get emissions down across the whole life cycle. So, these three documents work together and if you are taking carbon reduction seriously you need to be familiar with all three.

Let’s dive a bit deeper into each of these and understand why they are important.

CBAM serves multiple objectives, each supporting the broader EU climate strategy:

Preventing carbon leakages: Discouraging industries from��relocating��their manufacturing operations abroad to avoid .

Levelling the competitive playing field:�� CBAM��ensures��that importers of carbon-intensive��products are subject to��a��comparable��carbon cost to the EU’s Emissions Trading System.

Encouraging global emissions reduction:��International producers have incentives to decarbonise their processes, extending EU’s climate influence globally.

Strengthening transparency and accountability:��CBAM mandates the detailed reporting of embedded emissions, making sure that carbon footprints throughout global supply chains are accurately measured, verified and shared.

UK’s��adoption��of CBAM

The UK is due to introduce its own version of CBAM on 1 January 2027, following the EU’s implementation in January 2026. While the systems are similar,��there are a few key differences. The UK CBAM��will be a tax-based mechanism��based on the quarterly UK Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) price in the prior quarter. The UK will also only cover direct emissions when it launches in 2027,��with the inclusion of indirect emissions being delayed until 2029 at the earliest.

Impact on bidding

Imported materials will cost more, impacting bids and project tender prices. To secure work, suppliers must demonstrate emissions transparency in their supply chains, as this is likely to become a procurement requirement written into contracts. While this could create financial and legal risks and costs for companies unprepared for carbon accounting, those with well-established procurement routes with transparent reporting will be less affected and maintain a competitive advantage.

The need to meet CBAM requirements will��likely be��included��in contracts. It represents a risk, and developers and contractors must agree on who is liable for the fluctuation in cost. The appetite for risk along with the market conditions and existing supply chains will inform different approaches and attract differing levels of cost.

Data verification as new standard

If UK emissions trading data cannot be verified or actual emissions data cannot be obtained, importers must show evidence of the efforts they have made to try to��acquire��it��from their suppliers – including outreach, documentation requests and��attempts��to validate information.

This adds administrative work, but prevents companies from simply defaulting to non-specific data, and aligns��with the��EU’s approach��which��limits��default values for reporting, moving toward country-specific defaults and prioritising actual emissions data.

As CBAM rules tighten, real��emissions��data from suppliers will become��essential��and standard. Navigating this complexity can be minimised by setting clear expectations from the start so that neither time��nor cost is wasted by either side.

As a Building Life Ambassador and through our work at BE-ST, our recent work reinforced the scale and complexity of the challenge. The construction skills system is substantial. It includes colleges, universities, private training providers, employers, manufacturers, professional bodies and community organisations. It supports apprentices, students, graduates, existing workers, career changes and specialist practitioners. However, scale should not be confused with coherence.

If we want the sector to respond effectively to the UKGBC roadmaps, we need a skills system that is better aligned with the outcomes we are asking industry to deliver. Climate resilience and whole life carbon literacy can no longer sit at the edge of mainstream provision. They need to be embedded in further and higher education programmes, apprenticeships, professional development and workforce upskilling in ways that are practical, applied and relevant to real work.

There is also more we can do to align approaches across the four nations. The construction workforce does not operate neatly within administrative boundaries. Employers, supply chains and professional standards move across the UK, yet qualification structures, funding models and curriculum arrangements are often disaggregated. Devolution rightly allows different nations to respond to their own economic, social and policy context, but divergence should not become an unnecessary barrier to efficiency, workforce mobility or shared improvement. Greater alignment around competence, evidence and outcomes would help the sector respond more effectively to common challenges.

We should also be honest about the support educators need. Colleges, universities and training providers are being asked to prepare learners for a sector that is changing quickly. That cannot be achieved through curriculum documentation alone. Educators need exposure to emerging practice, live projects, manufacturers, design teams, contractors, clients and researchers. They need time and support to remain current. They also need stronger mechanisms for knowledge exchange with industry, particularly in areas where practice is developing faster than formal standards.

Recalibrate is our leadership programme for C-Suite execs and board members. The first in-person touchpoint of this programme is called ‘Night at the Museum’. Do not put too much emphasis on the title- it is an evening in a heritage space – so neither a night nor a museum makes a debut in this event. If you did think about the movie though, you might be getting warmer, very much like our planet. I did find myself in Ben Stiller’s shoes because very much like the plot of the movie, I did not really know what I had signed up for until the sun went down and took the spotlight and brought to life all the characters playing a role in climate change. Before he takes the stage, we open with an exercise on sharing what is the legacy the cohort wants to leave behind. A thought-provoking talk and a gripping conversation later, we close the evening with a lovely dinner to mark the beginning of a six-month journey they will all be embarking on from that point.

He paints a picture of the quagmire we have managed to trap ourselves into. This year he explained how the manifestation of extractive capitalism that let the market forces run without proper control until now is more durable and shockproof than us and the ‘Goldilocks climate’ that has actualised humanity and the rest of the living planet.��Drawing on the words of from his book , Jonathon compared this manifestation to a wendigo, a mythical cannibalistic creature from indigenous folklore, whose insatiable appetite isn’t for its nourishment but for the sake of it.

What’s worse, he adds, is that it has remoulded humans into happy well-behaved consumers with a psychological pattern to accumulate with barely to no regard for anyone or anything else. There is something emotional about listening to these fast approaching tipping points in a centuries old room that may have stood the test of time until now, but is approaching a bleak future with every passing day of inaction. For me it makes these tipping points seem closer and unavoidable than ever.

After a very heart breaking reality check on the gradual decline of the sustainability agenda against a soaring graph of population and GDP, he brings that aforementioned hope by sharing some very interesting mini-revolutions emerging across the globe, be it Australia’s Solar Sharer offer or Pakistani farmers’ grass roots movement of replacing diesel engines with solar panels. Against dusky skies, it dawned on all of us sitting in that circle, that though there is hope for the future with such brilliant initiatives, the scale of change is nowhere close to being enough leaving the room in an almost eerie silence.

More Food for Thought

After such an engaging conversation, it is only right to��move to a��convivial close. The group went on to get to know each other��and unpack what stood out for them.��The topics spanned everything from��plans for the upcoming summer holidays��to the��possibilities��for the fossil fuel industry��set against��the��unshakable��Trump��administration��alongside UK’s��(yet again)��new administration.��Jonathon left the group with��the words,��‘collectively the question we need to raise is how can we find ways of living that are compatible with the natural world, support justice and fairness for humanity and future generations to come.’��

The table closed��with��the feeling I shared��from the very beginning –��by acknowledging��the privilege of being in this room, around this table and celebrate the opportunity of having these conversations. I am looking forward to hearing more��such��discussions��and what this��group of individuals go on to do in��materialising the legacy they want to leave behind.

Heat does not stop at the platform edge or the hospital car park. A railway line that buckles in extreme heat sits alongside homes that overheat for exactly the same reason: both were designed and built for a climate that no longer exists. A wildfire burning outside a town ( as many communities across Europe, and even in the Scottish Highlands have experienced this month) is not a rural problem separate from the built environment; it is a direct threat to the homes, water supplies and infrastructure at the urban edge. A flooded substation and a flooded high street are symptoms of the same underlaying failure to plan for the climate conditions our infrastructure and buildings will actually face over their lifetimes, rather than the ones assumed when they were designed. Britain’s buildings, transport and drainage were never designed for the risks now arriving, but our buildings, transport and drainage are three expressions of the same system.

The need for a joined-up response is not a new observation for UKGBC. It is the argument at the heart of the BuildingLife Ambassador Campaign: that mitigation, resilience and nature recovery are interdependent outcomes of a single system, not three items on a checklist to be worked through independently. A building that meets its carbon target but cannot cope with heat or flood risk has not solved the problem it was set up to solve. The same is true in reverse. Infrastructure resilience delivered without regard to the buildings it serves, or built environment policy delivered without regard to the wider infrastructure it depends on, will always fall short of what the moment demands.

That is why UKGBC’s Net Zero Whole Life Carbon Roadmap and the UK Climate Resilience Roadmap matter so much, and why this campaign matters now. Together, they provide the clearest picture yet of what a genuinely future-ready built environment requires: not just lower emissions, but buildings and places that can withstand the climate impacts already locked in. The Whole Life Carbon Roadmap gives industry and government a common pathway to decarbonise the built environment at pace, while the UK Climate Resilience Roadmap sets out the urgent policy changes needed to embed adaptation into everyday decisions, from planning and design to retrofit and investment. Without both these shifts happening in lockstep, we risk leaving people, places and infrastructure exposed to the impacts of a changing climate.

Every major public investment should be assessed against the climate conditions it will face over its lifetime, and that principle should apply equally to every major building investment and retrofit decision, public and private, and it should be embedded across government, from Treasury spending decisions to planning and infrastructure policy. That means writing resilience requirements into planning policy and building standards with the same seriousness currently given to carbon, rather than treating adaptation as a follow up conversation once mitigation targets are settled.

With a new government now setting its priorities, the opportunity to embed that principle across policy is real. That government is led, for the first time, by a former mayor, and as Prime Minister Andy Burnham brings regional mayors into the newly revived National Economic Council, there is a genuine chance to turn heat resilience from a patchwork of local responses into a national mission.��Burnham has seen the impacts before: as Mayor of Greater Manchester in 2018, Burnham visited crews fighting the Saddleworth Moor wildfires and had to press central government for air support and for assistance with the response costs.��I would love to see the regional Mayors work together on preparing for the effects of extreme heat at a national scale now that one of their own leads the Government, rather than each simply reacting once a heatwave hits. Leaders met at the Council’s first sitting last week; I hope heat resilience was firmly on the agenda, and that it becomes part of the Government’s ten-year plan for growth.

From drawings to decisions

As designers, we are trained to draw, model, calculate, and optimise. We are good at solving problems once the brief is set. At White Arkitekter, that brief is already framed by a strong, value-led approach- one that is firmly rooted in designing with a climate-positive lens and an understanding of architecture as a social and environmental act.

Through my time at UKGBC, I began to understand that the brief itself may be one of the most powerful design tools we have.

Working on the update of the 2019 Net Zero Framework meant stepping upstream away from individual projects and towards the rules, principles, and expectations that shape all projects. It meant asking the same questions I had always wrestled with but now, out loud: What does “net zero” really mean? Who decides? Who benefits? Who defines it, and what does it include? Hearing how differently stakeholders interpret net zero, in terms of scope and timelines, was revealing.

These questions directly shape what gets built, what cities become and the quality of the environment our lives unfold in.

Learning to speak policy

As an architectural designer and sustainability specialist, the learning curve was steep and exhilarating. I had to shed the comfort of project-specific thinking and adopt the skin of a policy writer. Someone who zooms out. Someone who understands that language matters. That a single word can open doors or close them for years. The work itself involved leading, writing, editing, coordinating, chairing discussions.

I learned that good policy is not about perfection, but about clarity, ambition, and usability. A framework that cannot be applied will be ignored. One that is too vague will be misused. Walking that line is what often kept me up at night questioning certain word choices.

Perhaps the biggest question that surfaced for me through this process was: how can we do better as a society? Not just through conversations that sit safely within professional echo chambers, but by reaching the clients, investors, and builders who make decisions every day and encouraging them to think beyond the next two years. This reframing feels critical, especially in cities like London, where the pressure to build quickly risks flattening identity, performance, and care.

Continuity at DESNZ

Miatta Fahnbulleh takes over as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, replacing Ed Miliband. This is a strong continuity appointment for us. Fahnbulleh has held junior DESNZ roles before and knows the department’s priorities well, and she is already known to UKGBC directly, having spoken at our Climate Resilience Roadmap launch last year. That gives us both a Secretary of State whose commitment to net zero is well established and an existing relationship to build on, one that has the ear of the Prime Minister as a core member of his political team.

The rest of the DESNZ team reflects the same pattern. Martin McCluskey remains in place on the Energy Consumers brief, and Katie White has been promoted to Minister of State while retaining responsibility for climate policy. Between them, this is about as much stability as we could have asked for in the department most central to our decarbonisation agenda.

What legacy does Starmer’s government leave behind for our sector?

One of the clearest successes was the publication of the Warm Homes Plan – the first long‑term national strategy of its kind, and something UKGBC and industry have long called for. With £15bn committed this Parliament, the plan finally set out a coherent approach to tackling fuel poverty, scaling heat pumps, expanding rooftop solar, and supporting low‑income households – but Starmer has stepped down just before the most important phase: delivery. The next government must build on this strong strategic platform, embedding real‑world lessons from local authorities, community groups and place‑based pilots, and ensuring resilience is not treated as an optional extra.

The Future Homes and Buildings Standard was another milestone. Starmer’s government chose the more ambitious option: no new gas boilers, mandatory rooftop solar, and improved energy efficiency for new homes. This shift will cut emissions from new build homes by around 75% and gives industry long‑awaited certainty. It’s a strong foundation, but there is more to do. Developers are already building to higher standards, and Burnham’s government will need to build on this momentum to close the gap on climate resilience, embodied carbon and long‑term affordability.