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 | Our Environmental Sustainability Strategy 2020-2023 objectives

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

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.