Fosse Way

Fosse Way Prison site was previously a Young Offenders Institution. The works included demolition of the existing site and construction of a Phase 1 site encompassing x5 Prison Houseblocks, a CASU, a Kitchen Building, the Entrance Resources Hub and the Central Services Hub. The second phase of the project is the Northern Compound site which comprises an additional Prison Houseblock and Ancillary Building. The Prison – owned by the Ministry of Justice and operated by Serco – focuses on Prisoner Rehabilitation and preparing Prisoners for productive and wholesome life after their incarceration.

Envision were appointed as BREEAM Assessors on the project and have been instrumental in guiding Sustainability from concept design through to post-completion.

The Fosse Way Prison development falls under the wider Ministry of Justice’s Prison Estate Transformation Programme (PETP). Across several Prison sites (Envision have also been involved in the design and delivery of MOJ Five Wells, formerly known as ‘HMP Wellingborough’), the same issues have been encountered about how Prisons have additional site-specific demands and Security obligations that need to take priority over certain Sustainability needs. An example of this would be that BREEAM requires showers to have a maximum flow rate of 12 litres per minute in order to be a water-efficient development, however the showers installed for Prisoners need to be anti-ligature and it is a challenge within the water-consuming components market to find a specification which meets both these requirements. The BREEAM scheme takes many Prison-specific requirements into consideration (such as security recommendations aligning with a confidential and more comprehensive scheme and external lighting placing more importance on security than on energy efficiency or impact on ecology). However, along with the design team, Envision have identified additional areas where it is not possible for a Prison site to compromise and therefore where BREEAM criteria could benefit from some revision. Envision are working with the Ministry of Justice to bring these issues to the attention of the BRE in the hope that we can affect some positive changes so that Prison sites can be awarded for Sustainability when they are meeting all relevant requirements to the best of their ability with the stringent limitations taken into consideration.