16 commercial property
Bombay Sapphire wins BREEM award
The Bombay Sapphire gin distillery at Laverstoke Mill in Hampshire has been awarded the highly- prestigious BREEAM Award for Industrial Design at a ceremony held during the Ecobuild Conference in London last month.
Competing against several other sustainable construction projects, including Diageo’s Project Phoenix Brewhouse in Dublin; Tudor Estate, Building 1 in London; and the Siemens building in Lincoln, the Bombay Sapphire took first place.
Rent case is game changer
A group of the country’s biggest landlords have won a game-changing case which will allow them to collect rent from companies in administration.
Under previous law, rent due while a tenant is in administration is payable if the business continues to trade from the premises.
Above: Glasshouse courtyard designed by Heatherwick Studio
Left: Aerial view of the distillery
involved in this inspirational project should be extremely proud of their involvement“.
BREEAM, the world’s leading and most widely-used environmental assessment method for buildings, sets the standard for best practice in sustainable design and has become the measurement used to describe a building’s environmental performance.
The Bombay Sapphire is situated within a conservation area and Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) in rural Hampshire. But with natural beauty also comes a rich heritage. For more than 225 years Laverstoke Mill was a hand-crafted paper mill that printed the watermarked banknote paper for the Bank of England and British Empire.
Distillation is already taking place on site under the watchful eye of master distiller Nik Fordham, and central to the 2,500 sq m distillery are the still houses. These 18th century buildings are home to the traditional copper stills used by Bombay Sapphire in its unique ’Vapour Infusion’ distillation process.
The 10 exotic botanicals infused into every drop of Bombay Sapphire will also be showcased
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in their natural state in the intricate glasshouses designed by Heatherwick Studio.
The distillery has a multi-functional renewable energy strategy and scored 100% in the energy and management sections and more than 90% in the water, materials and waste sections of the BREEAM award for industrial design.
Fordham commented on the award: “Sustainability is vitally important to Bombay Sapphire and has underpinned all of our plans for the distillery. As such, we were delighted to win this award. BREEAM has kept sustainability high up on the agenda and has provided a benchmarking mechanism that feeds into our corporate sustainability policy and key performance indicators. Fundamentally, we also believe building such a sustainable distillery makes financial sense, increasing efficiency and long-term operational energy and water-use savings. GWP Architecture, working with Meller, has been instrumental in delivering such a state-of-the-art, sustainable distillery. Everyone
Throughout the construction process, building materials have been recycled from demolished buildings elsewhere on site, structure and facades have been retained where possible and new materials have been responsibly sourced where possible. The ecological value of the site has been enhanced through native species planting and the re-design of the riverbank to incorporate a biodiverse habitat. This included temporarily relocating more than 400 fish by hand and ensuring that provision was made for colonies of bats and a bevy of otters.
The energy strategy innovatively considers the distillery as a source for a renewable fuel supply. Following distillation the spent botanicals will be used to fuel a biomass boiler providing heat and hot water to the site. The temperature in each of the glasshouses is also maintained using excess heat from the distillation process. Electricity will be generated by a hydro- electric turbine in the River Test and an array of photo-voltaic cells. Restricted waterflow devices are used throughout the site and are assisted by rainwater harvesting.
The distillery is preparing to open to the public later this year.
However, a legal loophole intended to help struggling businesses meant that if a business filed a notice of intention to appoint administrators immediately after its quarterly rental date, and completed that appointment within 10 days, the business could continue trading rent free.
This loophole has now been closed off, thanks to an action by British Land, Intu, Hammerson and Land Securities.
Between them, the quartet chalked up £3 million of unpaid rent when retailer Game went into administration. Their case against Game, which ran for two years, concluded in March, with the Court of Appeal ruling that the law was unfairly stacked in the tenants’ favour.
According to Chris Pearson of CBRE’s Southampton-based lease consultancy team, the result is that, from now on, rent will be payable on a pay-as- you-go basis.
He said: “Where a tenant continues trading it is only right that the landlord can continue to charge rent. In these circumstances the landlord can not get the unit back and re-let it, so is potentially in a worse position than if the tenant had vacated altogether.
“In the case of a multiple store retailer, rental exemptions on this scale have a massive impact on landlords letting across large portfolios. It’s not just a single shop – it could be hundreds. And the loss of income doesn’t stop there; there’s also the service charge.“
THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SOLENT & SOUTH CENTRAL – APRIL 2014
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