Policy information sourced from the Islington Local Plan

S1 Delivering Sustainable Design

  • The Council will seek to ensure the borough develops in a way that maximises positive effects on the environment and improves quality of life, whilst minimising or avoiding negative impacts. Ensuring sustainable design will reduce fuel poverty, and improve long term energy security for Islington residents and businesses; minimise the contribution of development in Islington to climate change and ensure that developments are designed to mitigate the effects of climate change, in line with the three strategic objectives of the Committee on Climate Change to reduce energy demand, decarbonise heat and decarbonise electricity.
  • The Council will promote zero carbon development, with the aim that all buildings in Islington will be net zero carbon by 2050. To ensure that Islington is on the right trajectory to achieve this target, sustainable design must be considered holistically from the start of the design process and all development proposals are required to demonstrate how they will comply with all relevant sustainable design standards and policies during design, construction and operation of the development.
  • All development proposals must maximise energy efficiency and minimise on-site greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with the following energy hierarchy:
    • be lean: use less energy and manage demand during operation. Energy demand (both annual and peak) must be minimised as far as possible through consideration of building fabric energy efficiency as an integral part of the design, with a focus on building form and passive design in addition to specification.
    • be clean: supply energy efficiently and cleanly, and utilise local energy resources (such as heat networks and secondary heat).
    • be green: maximise opportunities for renewable energy by producing, storing and using renewable energy on-site.
    • be seen: monitor, verify and report on energy performance.
  • The Council will work with partners and local communities to improve the energy efficiency of the existing building stock and wider public realm, with a particular focus on increasing energy efficiency of homes and businesses. Islington’s carbon offset fund will be used to implement projects to reduce carbon emissions from the existing building stock.
  • The Council will promote the extension of existing heat networks and the delivery of new heat network infrastructure. Heat networks have the potential to contribute significantly to climate change mitigation through the decarbonisation of heat, minimising fuel poverty, and maximising energy resilience.
  • All development proposals are required to adopt an integrated approach to water management which considers flood risk, sustainable drainage, water efficiency, water quality and biodiversity. All development proposals will be expected to reduce water demand and meet best practice water efficiency targets.
  • The Council will promote a circular economy approach to design and construction to keep products and materials in use for as long as possible and to minimise construction waste. A central part of this is ensuring developments are designed to be flexible and adaptable to changing requirements and circumstances over their lifetime.
  • All new development must be designed, constructed and operated to limit contribution to air pollution and to improve air quality as far as possible, as well as reducing exposure to poor air quality, especially among vulnerable people.

For more information please see the Islington Local Plan