Our commitment to sustainability

We're an early adopter of the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing. This is a sector-leading commitment which puts us at the forefront of sustainable best practice.

It commits us to reporting on our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance annually, in a transparent, consistent and comparable way.

We’ve produced our fourth ESG Report to inform stakeholders about the work we’re doing and impact we’re making.

We’re committed to sustainability and anticipate that it will play a key strategic role in our future. As a result, we’re keen to embed environmental, social, and governance (ESG) into our financing and are focused on being transparent and accountable to our stakeholders. We've established a Sustainable Finance Framework to demonstrate the next stage of our commitment as we adopt sustainability into our finances. This framework has been externally reviewed and assured by Sustainalytics. You can find out more about the evaluation in their Second-Party Opinion[pdf] 448KB.

Environmental

This examines how we’re performing and planning around climate change, ecology and resource management. It outlines our plans for reaching Net Zero by 2050 and publishes our greenhouse gas emissions. It also includes how we’re improving the energy efficiency of our homes and how we’re helping our customers to become stakeholders in their environmental futures.

Social

This assesses how we treat people in relation to affordability and security, building safety and quality, how we listen to our customers and provide the right kind of support. Plus, it looks at how we transform spaces to build better and more sustainable communities. It includes our work to reduce fuel poverty and to achieve best practice customer complaints handling.

Governance

This section considers how we regulate ourselves and focuses on structure and governance, our Board, employee wellbeing and our supply chain management. It includes continuous organisational risk management to ensure better outcomes for everyone and our commitment to improve the gender pay gap.

To find out more about our governance, visit our How we're run page.

Our Environmental Sustainability Strategy

We’ve launched our Environmental Sustainability Strategy for 2025-2030. This is our five-year plan, which explains how we’ll reduce our impact on the environment and protect natural resources in the future.  

Housing is responsible for about 14 percent of all UK carbon emissions. This means we have a vital role to play in improving the energy efficiency of the homes we provide. We aim to reduce their carbon impact and deliver those benefits to customers, communities, and future generations. This is a priority for our new Corporate Strategy.

Our goal

We’re committed to reducing carbon emissions while supporting nature and improving homes and communities. Our goal is to create warmer, healthier homes that use less energy, while also helping nature to thrive and giving local communities more green spaces to enjoy.

We’re already delivering several projects to help improve home energy efficiencies and reduce emissions across our operations. This includes aiming for energy performance certificates (EPCs) of band C for all rented homes by 2030 and a commitment to achieving Net Zero carbon by 2050.  

Four key areas

Our new strategy builds on our previous one and focuses on four areas: 

  • Carbon and nature skills and learning: environmental and sustainability training for our team, identifying skills gaps, and developing customer Climate Champions.  
  • Cutting carbon emissions: a better understanding of our carbon output, working on existing homes to improve energy performance, focusing on zero-carbon new homes, reducing emissions from our operations, and generating funding.
  • Enhancing biodiversity: protecting and improving nature in our communities through collaboration with partners and customers.
  • Ethical procurement and supply: supporting local contractors, developing a repair-first policy, and maximising the use of recycled and reused products.

Read the full Environmental Sustainability Strategy for 2025-2030.