Seddon sustainability analyst Louis Saunderson has written a comment piece for Building magazine. He argues that regional leaders must keep sustainability moving, whatever happens in national politics.

Since the recent change of prime minister, people are again asking where the UK’s net zero policy is heading. But schools, hospitals and public buildings are still being commissioned, designed and built every day, and they will stand long after today’s political debates have faded.

The article explains that net zero depends on two stages: policy and delivery. National policy sets the direction through targets, standards and funding. How a building actually performs is decided further down the chain, in the brief, the design, the materials, and how it is procured, built and run.

Louis says this is why the conversation can’t begin and end in Westminster. Regional authorities, contractors and public sector organisations make the decisions that lock in how much energy a building uses, how complex it is to run and how much cost it carries over its life.

Across the public sector, sustainability has moved well beyond carbon reporting. Local authorities, academy trusts and estates teams now see it as a practical way to improve resilience, lower running costs and make public money go further. As the article puts it, every pound spent heating an inefficient school is a pound unavailable for teaching, maintenance or pupil support.

Two Seddon education projects show this in practice.

At Watermill SEN Satellite School in Stoke-on-Trent, the scheme first came back over budget. Rather than continue with an inefficient design, the client and delivery team tested every decision against cost, buildability and carbon. They made the building more compact, rationalised the structural grid and reduced the groundworks. The revised scheme came back within budget and avoided around 150 tonnes of construction-phase carbon. Its bolted steel frame can also be taken apart and reused rather than demolished.

At The Orchards Federation in Bolton, the focus is on improving buildings that are already in use. Lighting upgrades, better controls, heat pumps and on-site renewables are expected to save more than 50 tonnes of operational carbon a year. Just as importantly, they give the schools more control over long-term running costs. Bolton sits within Greater Manchester, which is aiming for carbon neutrality by 2038, more than a decade ahead of the national target.

Louis notes that the two projects show regional leadership doesn’t follow a single model. In Greater Manchester, an established city-region is setting the pace. In Stoke-on-Trent, the council and its partners are keeping momentum going while the region’s powers catch up.

The article concludes that while governments can change direction, decisions on the ground can’t simply be put on hold. Clear, stable national policy gives regions the confidence to plan and invest. But it is regional leadership that turns policy into workable decisions balancing cost, risk and performance.

In Louis’s words, net zero “will be delivered through the consistency of the decisions made every day across the UK’s regions.”