Local authorities
Securing public policies and communication
Local authorities must embed environmental clauses in procurement, substantiate their institutional climate and biodiversity claims (Directive 2024/825), and demonstrate net zero land take. NORMAXIS provides the technical evidence and, through IRICE, the third-party verification that makes public criteria opposable.
Your challenges
Public policies that must be evidenced.
Public-procurement clauses
Environmental clauses and third-party-verified biodiversity criteria in tenders.
Environmental claims
Substantiation of institutional climate/biodiversity communication (Directive 2024/825).
Net Zero Land Take
Land-consumption diagnosis and renaturation strategy at territory scale.
Third-party verification
Accredited verification (IRICE) where independence is required in procurement.
Context
Procurement is where environmental policy becomes enforceable.
From 2026, French public buyers must include environmental considerations in their award criteria. For a local authority this changes the nature of the exercise: an ambition stated in a climate plan has to be turned into a criterion that can be written into a tender, scored objectively, and defended if a losing bidder challenges it.
The difficulty is rarely ambition. It is drafting a criterion that discriminates on something verifiable. A criterion that rewards a self-declared commitment rewards whoever writes the best prose; one that rewards third-party-verified performance rewards whoever actually performs. Our work on environmental clauses in public procurement is about that difference.
Claims
What an authority says about itself is now regulated.
Directive (EU) 2024/825 restricts environmental claims that are not substantiated, and public bodies are not exempt when they communicate about their own assets or policies. A statement that a school renovation is exemplary, or that a district is biodiversity-positive, needs a basis that someone independent has examined.
This is where an accredited certification body has a role that a consultant cannot fill. IRICE, the group's certification body, is accredited by Cofrac under ISO/IEC 17065 (no. 5-0655). Accreditation is periodic third-party scrutiny of the certifier itself — it is what separates a certificate from an opinion.
Land and buildings
Two obligations that arrive together.
Most authorities are simultaneously subject to the tertiary decree, which imposes a measured reduction trajectory on their building stock, and to Net Zero Land Take, which constrains development. Treating them as one programme rather than two files usually reveals that the same renovation decisions serve both.
Going further
Related pages.
Public buyers and asset owners face several obligations at once. These pages set out what each one requires.
- Environmental clauses in public procurement — drafting criteria that survive a challenge
- EU Directive 2024/825 on environmental claims — what may and may not be asserted
- Tertiary decree — measured reduction trajectory on the building stock
- OPERAT annual declaration — the filing that evidences the trajectory
- Net Zero Land Take — the land budget allocated by planning documents
- Regional and local planning — where the allocation is decided
- IRICE, Cofrac-accredited certification body — third-party verification, ISO/IEC 17065
Support for a local authority
Technical evidence plus independent, accredited verification.
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