BREEAM Communities: Masterplanning and Neighbourhood Scale
Scale and intent
BREEAM Communities operates at the neighbourhood and masterplan scale, not the building scale. It is used to plan and assess sustainable communities at the earliest planning stages, before individual buildings are designed. The scheme helps a project team embed sustainability into a masterplan and demonstrate it to planners and stakeholders.
Three steps
The scheme is organised around three sequential steps: Step 1 - Governance (establishing project governance, stakeholder engagement, and a sustainability champion), Step 2 - Social and Economic (understanding local needs, consultation, economic and social wellbeing), and Step 3 - Resources and Energy (land use, transport, energy, water, ecology, and climate). Credits are awarded within these steps, and the overall score maps to rating bands.
Traps
A very common error is treating Communities as a building-level scheme or expecting it to award credits for individual building fabric - it does not. Another trap is assuming the assessment happens at completion; Communities is a planning-stage tool, so evidence is generated early and the certificate reflects the masterplan. Watch for questions that confuse Communities with Infrastructure: Communities is about mixed-use neighbourhoods and placemaking; Infrastructure is about civil engineering assets.
Worked example
A developer planning a 500-home mixed-use neighbourhood would use Communities at outline planning stage: governance and stakeholder engagement (Step 1), local needs assessment and consultation (Step 2), and land use, transport and energy strategy (Step 3). A distractor suggesting 'assess each house's energy credits' is out of scale and wrong.
Rule of thumb
If the question mentions masterplan, neighbourhood, or planning application, think Communities. If it mentions a road or bridge, think Infrastructure.