As Scotland's first Property Technology B-Corp (a rigorous certification that demonstrates the company meets the highest standards of social and environmental impact), Grand Bequest was founded in 2020 to finally bring a circular economy mindset to the construction industry through advanced data analytics and technology. Grand Bequest's mission is to see building demolitions become the rare exception and support councils, communities, and local citizens bringing their empty and forgotten buildings back to life.

Today, we demolish a building every 10 minutes in the UK. This results in the loss of over 50,000 buildings every year. And, shockingly, more than half of all of Scotland's national waste is directly attributed to the construction and demolition of buildings.

The construction and demolition industries operate in a traditionally linear approach -- build new, demolish, build new, demolish; and there is no indication of this approach changing at the needed scale for the UK to reach its legislated target of net-zero national greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050\.

GHG emissions caused by the construction and demolition of buildings, known as 'embodied carbon emissions', are one of the leading causes of climate change. Architect Climate Action Network (ACAN) has found that embodied carbon emissions account for up to 75% of a building's total emissions over its lifespan and the total embodied carbon emissions of new buildings and infrastructure in the UK accounts for around 50 Mt CO2e, a figure in excess of 10% of our national territorial emissions.

Embodied carbon emissions are not regulated in anyway and continue to be ignored by national planning policy. And until the Government introduces vital regulations, there is no significant financial reason for developers and housebuilders to change their linear behaviour and reduce embodied carbon emissions. So, what can we do while carbon legislation is lagging to protect buildings from going to landfill? We can make demolitions prohibitively expensive.

This proposal will create the case for increasing demolition fees in Scotland by using predictive modelling to identify likely demolition locations across Scotland by 2050\. This model will then be used to test the economic outcomes of increasing the local planning demolition fees and publish the necessary fee structure improvements. This proposal will also serve the vital role as a demonstrative illustration of the fee increase methodology for the wider UK and beyond to definitively cure our wasteful addiction to building demolitions and support a circular regenerative approach to placemaking.