Posted on 05 December 2024
Our Environmental and Social Impact Report 2023/24 (PDF, 8MB) shows our progress against our short term goals and our 2030 objectives under three themes: environmental, social and governance.
Being honest about how we’re performing, and where we can do better, benefits our customers, our communities and the environment.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve made some big operational changes to become more customer focused. We’ve established our neighbourhood approach and new customer contact centre, which means three quarters of colleagues are now in roles directly serving our customers, and we’ve doubled the amount of time we spend in our communities.
And the recent acquisition of Pinnacle Group gives us the resources we need to focus on improving communities across the UK. We now own and manage about 120,000 homes and provide end-to-end neighbourhood services to about 350,000 homes.
Our impact goals are linked directly to our social purpose: to ensure our customers have high quality, safe and energy-efficient homes, in sustainable communities, with support services that meet their needs.
For example, we need to make our homes and neighbourhoods more energy efficient and climate resilient, while maximising the potential of our green spaces. The Greener Futures Partnership (GFP), of which we’re a founding member, successfully bid for £40.4m from the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund in 2022/23 to retrofit 5,500 homes over the next two years. We’re using our share to improve the energy-efficiency of 1,000 homes in Chichester.
This project is part of our long-term plan for all our homes to reach an average EPC of high band B (SAP 86) by 2045. We’re also changing the way we design and build homes, choosing more efficient and less wasteful construction methods, taking a fabric-first approach to energy efficiency and switching to low carbon heating alternatives. In 2023/24, we completed 630 homes, 95% of which achieved an EPC rating of Band A or B.
This will have significant impact. Not only will it help us meet our goal of achieving net zero by 2050, but customers will save money on bills and find it easier to keep warm in winter. There’s strong evidence that health and wellbeing improve by living in a warmer home. And, if energy bills are lower, there’s less risk of them falling into arrears.
We’ve done a lot, but recognise that we have a way to go, particularly in relation to understanding, and improving, our wider emissions as an organisation. We’ll continue to focus on this in coming years.
You can download our Environmental and Social Impact Report 2023/24 from our Environmental and Social Impact pages.