Sustainability regulations and targets are factors, but not drivers, of investment Every university that SFG has worked with has wanted to promote sustainability within its new development. Nobody has set themselves the low bar of wanting to meet building regulations and no more. Some have been content to let the level of sustainability be decided by the prevailing regulations as well as cost-benefit analysis of features and interventions that may have an impact on operating costs. Many, though, have wanted to push the levels of sustainability further than this, in the belief that it is the right thing to do and in line with their institutional ethos, with the understanding that students increasingly expect this as a norm. While we have seen student surveys sometimes indicate a willingness to pay a premium for more highly sustainable accommodation, we have yet to see any data that demonstrates it in practice. It is easy for the evidence to be muddied, given that generally the most sustainable accommodation options are also the newest and highest quality, so other factors are likely to be driving the student decision-making process. However, SFG has not to date come across a project that was primarily driven by considerations around sustainability. In nearly all cases the main driver was linked to the university’s underlying business case of needing to recruit and retain students, and therefore needing to grow bed numbers and/or improve quality. Improvements in sustainability were always a lower- order benefit or driver, but never near the bottom of the list. Many universities have sustainability as a key driver for their high-level campus masterplan, so their vision is around creating an estate that meets their ambitious commitments around carbon neutrality. The challenge always comes at the point of taking that masterplan to the individual project stage, where business cases consider viability. Compared to residential projects, it is easier to justify (and control) highly innovative and sustainable academic buildings, as there isn’t such a clear income stream to bring a financial return on investment into sharp focus. Accommodation is still generally considered separate and ancillary to the main university operations, and as such is normally at the very least expected to wash its face financially. Nevertheless, what is included in the costs that need to be covered can vary between a full-cost model, including life- cycle, allocations for other university service team overheads (finance, human resources, central estates etc.), through to models which look at direct operational cost only. Page 16 | SFG | Meeting demand for modernised university-owned accommodation