Look inside giant Leeds office building due to be 'most sustainable in Yorkshire' and new home to Lloyds and Arup

The Yorkshire Post was given an exclusive tour of the new building by Paul Pavia, head of development for site owner MEPC, as well as Andrew Leaver and Jason Turner from architects tp bennett.

It has already been made public that Lloyds Banking Group and consultancy Arup will be taking space in the new building but Mr Pavia said another organisation, which does not yet wish to be named, will be the first to move in.

He said that seven different organisations will eventually be moving into the building which will be capable of hosting 2,500 workers at once. There will be a gym operator in the basement and a leisure and retail outlet on the ground floor.

"The first company will move in in about six weeks,” Mr Pavia said.

"All the office space is now let or under offer. We have turned down about two or three others.

"It is unprecedented even given our track record of successful letting. It is the biggest spec development we have ever done here and it has exceeded all expectations. A lot of things have aligned to create that.

“One was the flight to quality and sustainable buildings, two was post-Covid people have looked at their office footprints and realised they could move to better quality space.”

The new offices use an all-electric reversible air source heat pump system and air-cooled chillers to reduce carbon emissions, while windows are triple-glazed and the building has 7,500 square feet of solar panels.

Run entirely on renewable electricity, the building is the first outside London to achieve a NABERS Designed Reviewed Target Rating of Five Stars or above. The NABERS scheme, which originated in Australia in 1999, measures and rates the actual energy use of offices rather than hypothetical measures.

Mr Pavia said: “It is designed to be the most energy efficient building in Yorkshire and we can’t fudge it because we are going to be tested by a third party.

"It is designed on a metre-square basis to be the most energy efficient and we’ll find out in due course but I’m pretty confident.

"In Australia, they’ve proved that energy consumption of buildings has dramatically improved. We had a performance gap in the UK where it was a bit like buying a really energy-efficient car and driving it in first gear everywhere. People weren’t paying attention, leaving lights on all day, overheating buildings in winter, and this is different.

“We have a collaboration agreement with all the tenants because the important thing about NABERS is both parties – tenant and landlord – have to work together to achieve the rating.”

The building is the latest addition to the burgeoning Wellington Place business district, which is on the outskirts of Leeds city centre on the former Airedale Retail Park.

Mr Pavia said after work on the new building was briefly paused by Covid in 2020, it led to a rethink of the design and a decision by MEPC, backed by the British Telecom Pension Fund and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, to invest millions more in improving the sustainability element of the building.

Mr Pavia said: "I’m really fortunate to have investors with long-term strategic views on things. Over the lifecycle of the building you preserve the value by future-proofing it.”

‘Phenomenal’ to see building come to life

​The team of architects behind 11 and 12 Wellington Place have described their satisfaction at seeing their vision come to fruition.

In addition to the eco-friendly elements, design highlights include striking metallic bronze facades that mirror the stonework pattern of an adjacent listed lifting tower.

Andrew Leaver, director of tp bennett, said: “You don’t design these buildings for yourself, you design them for the people that will work in them. That is where the satisfaction is – the impact you can have on 2,500 people that can work here.”

Architect Jason Turner said: “My first day in the office with tp bennett was a sketch on this project. To see it now as what it is is phenomenal.”

Construction was done by Wates.