The Broads Authority goes greener
The Broads Authority has moved into the greenest office in Norwich which it will share with its key environmental partners, the Environment Agency and Natural England.
The move to the new office, on the banks of the River Wensum, means greater efficiency and a better service for Broads users. A mooring will be built in due course so that visitors can arrive by boat.
The move to Dragonfly House - named after the Broads Authority’s logo - has been made possible by Defra, which has purchased the building and paid for the removal costs.
The state of the art office, with views of the cathedral, is located on the Jarrold’s site off Barrack Street. It will shortly also house the Environment Agency and Natural England which will mean that the three main environmental bodies working together on issues such as climate change, will be located in the same place.
For the last 25 years the Broads Authority, which manages 125 miles of waterways, has been based in two listed 18th century former merchants’ houses at 18 and 20 Colegate. These proved difficult to adapt to meet modern needs and requirements, such as the Disability Discrimination Act.
John Packman, Chief Executive of the Broads Authority said: “This is an exciting step forward for the Authority. It will enable us to provide a more efficient and improved service for Broads users.
“The Authority is greatly indebted to Defra for its financial and practical support. Without it, it would have been impossible for the Authority to make this leap forward. Working in the same building as colleagues from Natural England and the Environment Agency presents a tremendous opportunity for even closer collaboration on the challenges we face, in particular the impacts of rising sea level and climate change.”
The Broads Authority will, for the first time, be able to hold its main meetings in its own office, instead of having to hire rooms throughout the city, saving staff travelling time and money.
Dragonfly House is rated as Excellent on the Building Research Establishment’s BREEAM scale. BREEAM measures the environmental performance of buildings by awarding credits for achieving a range of environmental standards and levels of performance. Each credit is weighted according to its importance and the resulting points are added up to give a total BREEAM score and rating.
Some of the key features of the new building that give it an excellent rating are:
• Environmentally friendly building materials. The office is clad in sustainably sourced timber, with brise soleil sunshades to reduce the solar gain.
• Air drawn through an earth duct, a large pipe buried three metres underground, will help warm the building in winter and cool it in summer. Propane powered chillers will be used to cool the temperature in the computer room. Propane has virtually no global warming impact and due to the clever design of the building the cooling requirement is much smaller than for a conventional office building.
• Rooftop solar panels are expected to heat 35% of the water used in the building.
• Rainwater which falls on the building roof will be collected, filtered and stored in an underground tank for use in flushing toilets. The storage tank can hold 30,000 litres of water.
• A sustainable urban drainage system will reduce the risk of flooding and protects water quality.
The Broads Authority’s new address is:
Dragonfly House
2 Gilders Way
Norwich
NR3 1UB
tel 01603 610734 (no change)
fax 01603 756069
Broads Radio Control tel 01603 756056
email broads@broads-authority.gov.uk
08/12/2008
