Silver award for sustainability with improved performance

We’re delighted to share that we have retained our Silver status with improved performance, in our SHIFT assessment 2021/22 - an audit of how we are performing against challenging environmental targets.

The accreditation recognises our continuous work to reduce our environmental impact to help tackle climate change and deliver lots of other important benefits for our customers and communities – helping us meet the targets in our Sustainability Strategy and Big Plan.

Sustainability Homes Index for Tomorrow (SHIFT) is the sustainability standard for the housing sector and an independent assessment and accreditation scheme.

Assessors looked at the performance of our homes and offices against a number of environmental factors such as the carbon emissions associated with our activities, energy and water use, how much waste we recycle, and how ethically we procure goods and services.

Headlines from our assessment report show that:

• Carbon emissions from our business mileage are the lowest across all other SHIFT accredited landlords, helped by our electric pool car.
• Carbon emissions from our offices are some of the lowest in the sector, at 134 tonnes per year
• Our Sustainability Strategy scored an impressive 13.5 out of 15 points.

The report made recommendations on how we can improve areas including:

• How we capture sustainability data about our homes and operations
• Strengthening engagement with residents around sustainability matters such as energy efficiency improvements, energy use and waste management
• Building more EPC A rated homes.

Simon Davies, our Sustainability Manager, says: “Retaining our Silver status with an improved score is a fantastic result for us. It shows us where our current strengths are and helps define our actions for how we can make an even bigger difference to our customers, communities and colleagues through better quality, energy efficient, homes and offices and an improved environment.”

Looking ahead

In 2022-23 we delivered a number of key sustainability projects that have helped us raise our game even further.

Highlights include recruiting ten brilliant Customer Sustainability Champions who are helping make our homes, communities and business greener. We completed our retrofit pilot project to trial low carbon technologies and their benefits for customers, and we went on to start our first large scale project to make more than 200 homes more energy efficient.

We also invested £139k to improve 18 areas of open space in neighbourhoods and boost biodiversity – like here in Derker; built more sustainable new homes; trained the majority of our colleagues in carbon literacy; and shared important energy saving advice with customers through our ‘Need a hand’ campaign and support for Big Energy Saving Week.

And there is more exciting work underway now – from installing solar panels on our Primrose Place and First Place offices; to recently securing a further £2.4m from the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) to improve the energy performance of hundreds more local homes over the next two years.

We’ll be sharing updates about our sustainability journey and how we’re performing, so keep your eyes peeled for more.