Gold: Caron Johnson – Ministry of Justice
Caron Johnson is sustainable construction lead for the Ministry of Justice’s New Prison expansion plan, a £4bn programme to deliver 18,000 new prison places. In this role she has created new policies and raised standards to meet government ambitions on climate change mitigation, resource efficiency, nature recovery and net-zero goals.
Caron joined the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) in summer 2020. She had spent 17 years at the Eden Project in Cornwall, where she led on sustainable construction and influenced the sector locally and nationally. The changes she is making at the MoJ, together with her ongoing work to promote professionalism in sustainability in the industry, are likely to impact both the prison sector and the wider construction sector worldwide.
Sustainable MoJ policy
One of Caron’s first tasks at the MoJ was to write its new sustainable construction and BREEAM policy, demanding mandatory credits on top of the BREEAM minimum credits requirement, to reflect the government goals.
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She has raised the target BREEAM levels from Excellent to Outstanding, with the policy applied to both new build and refurbishment projects. Caron also commissioned a natural capital evaluation tool, working with WSP, the Ecosystems Knowledge Network, Northumbria University and multiple other partner organisations to create a tool
that is tailored to the unique environment of prisons.
Her knowledge and experience mean that she can help feed into decision-making during the early stages of a project, when the most impact on sustainable development can be made.
She leads on communication with colleagues, consultants, contractors and their supply chains to help explain why standards higher than just compliance are important.
Beyond the MoJ, Caron is part of the Government Property Profession (GPP) group and delivers talks, case studies and toolkits to other departments and to cross-party working groups. She is part of CIOB’s specialist CEnv assessors team, reviewing written applications as part of the assessment process.
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