Energy performance

There’s a wide range of legal guidelines about environmental performance that housing associations must meet. But we don’t want to simply stop at fulfilling our legal requirements - we want to inspire further environmental action, locally and nationally.

We want to create sustainable homes, communities and company practices.

How we'll do this

Four key areas of our Environmental and Sustainability Strategy 2025-2030

Carbon and nature skills and learning

Roll out environmental and sustainability training for our team, identify skills gaps, and develop customer Climate Champions.  

Cutting carbon emissions

Better understand our carbon output, work on existing homes to improve energy performance, focus on zero-carbon new homes, reduce emissions from our operations, and generate funding. 

Enhancing biodiversity

Protect and improve nature in our communities through collaboration with partners and customers. 

Ethical procurement and supply

Support local contractors, develop a repair-first policy, and maximise the use of recycled and reused products.

What we're doing now | Examples of changes we’ve made

Improving the energy efficiency of our homes

We’re assessing the condition of all our homes with the aim of retrofitting them so that they have an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) of C or above by 2030. As of March 2024, 74 percent now have an EPC rating of C or above.

Sustainable construction and development

We use modern methods of construction and new innovative sources of renewable energies, such as air source heat pumps (ASHPs) and photovoltaic (PV) panels in our development programme where possible. As of March 2024, 235 homes have ASHPs and 721 have PV panels.  

Successful Warm Homes funding bid

We’ve been successful in our bid to win government funding from the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund to improve the energy performance of around 300 homes. We've been provisionally allocated £3,345,352 to be matched by funding from us and used over the next three years to install new low-carbon heating systems, solar panels, and improve insulation. This funding will help customers save on energy bills and cut carbon emissions. 

Helping customers take control

We’ve been installing Switchee smart thermostats in homes to give customers greater control of their heating and hot water, potentially helping reduce the cost of heating bills. The devices monitor the temperature and humidity in the home and can help reduce the chances of damp, mould, and condensation. As of March 2024, 492 homes have a Switchee installed. 

You can learn more about our environmental sustainability strategy and see how we’re performing around climate change, ecology, and resource management by visiting Our commitment to sustainability page.

Tips for your home | Changes you can make to help save energy and money

Heating and hot water

  • Turn the central heating thermostat down by one degree to save 10 percent on your bills. If you have health concerns, are elderly or have small children in the house, don’t go below 18°C.
  • Don’t leave the hot water heating on all the time. It’s much cheaper to set the timer to heat it up for a couple of hours each day.
  • Turn the heating off overnight and when no-one is in the house. Use your central heating timer to do this automatically.
  • Close the curtains when it’s getting dark and tuck them in behind the radiator. This keeps heat in the room.

Home appliances

  • Don’t use the remote control to turn things off – this leaves them on standby. Use the power button on the appliance or turn them off at the plug.
  • Keep your fridge temperature between three and five degrees Celsius.
  • Keep the oven door shut as much as possible when cooking – every time it’s opened, a quarter of the heat is lost.
  • Don’t leave your mobile phone on charge all night, it only needs two or three hours. Why not charge it while you’re eating dinner?

Washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher

  • Only put your washing machine or dishwasher on when full. Two half loads use more water, detergent and electricity than one full load.
  • Wash clothes at 30˚C to save electricity. Most modern fabric detergents work just as well at 30˚C as they do at higher temperatures.
  • Clean the fluff out of your tumble dryer filter every time it’s used.
  • Try to use a low temperature programme on your dishwasher.

Water

  • Only boil as much water as you need in your kettle but make sure the water covers the heating element if you’re using an electric one.
  • Make sure taps are turned off properly. In just one day a dripping tap can waste enough water to fill a bath.
  • An ordinary shower uses 40 percent less water than a bath. If you don’t have a shower, you can buy a bath tap attachment from most DIY stores.

Lighting

  • Always turn lights off when you leave a room and adjust curtains or blinds to allow as much light in during the day.
  • Replace old light bulbs with energy efficient ones or LED bulbs, which use much less electricity.

You can find lots more energy saving tips and information on smart meters in our guide to saving energy around the home