The Building Services Engineering Association (BESA) says it is starting to devise the first British Standard for healthy buildings.

The association said that owing to a series of factors including the rise of the human wellness industry, an increase of cases in occupational asthma and climate change, it had started to design the standard to “establish performance benchmarks for healthier buildings”.

BESA has launched a new Health and Well-being in Buildings Group to support this work.

Nathan Wood, chair of this group, said: “The building engineering sector has tended to measure its success in terms of energy performance, and the scrutiny on that will only increase as we look for ways to deliver the government’s vision of a net zero-carbon economy.” 

Wood added: “However, growing concern about how the indoor environment affects physical and mental health means we have a much wider social responsibility. Indoor air quality can be five times worse than outdoor conditions due to the mixture and concentration of pollutants. The focus on reducing carbon is an opportunity to address quality issues in the widest sense and ensure our built environment is reshaped to be fit for the future.” 

BESA’s national conference on 21 November will also be themed around these topics.