Our journey to sustainable development

This Earth Day, 22nd April, the focus is on plastics and the ambition for a 60% reduction of plastic production by 2040.  We can all play our part to achieve this.  But our focus as a business, today and everyday, is how we can make a meaningful difference when considering sustainable development.  

This starts from the very beginning of our land acquisition journey; favouring brownfield sites over greenbelt, choosing locations close to town centres and public transport, providing electric vehicle charging points to name a few.

We recognise and respond to the sustainable development golden thread that exists in national planning policy.  Established as the basis for making better planning decisions, for balancing social, economic and environmental considerations and, critically, for boosting housing delivery.  We achieve this in a number of different ways, from the design of our buildings - both inside and outside, the palette of materials they are constructed using and the use of renewable energy, creating beautiful and biodiverse gardens and outdoor spaces.

During construction we take all the steps we can to reduce construction waste, recycling where possible, choosing sustainable materials, working with contractors who employ local labour and supply chains.  

We can understand the whole life carbon footprint of our buildings and seek to better performance for each new scheme being created.  We’ve achieved an average of EPC B in our apartments across the portfolio.

All of this is important and can make a real difference, but it’s how our communities operate in the long term that can have the greatest impact.  From rainwater harvesting and allotments, to the way in which a building is designed to optimise solar benefit.  Having sustainable high quality energy solutions to help keep bills low.  Future-proofing to account for climate change, electric vehicles and new technologies.

Today, Earth Day, we can all reflect on what we are already achieving, but it is also a great opportunity to review what we can all do to make a difference.  Continually learning and evolving our internal and external specifications and processes to respond to customer needs and the drive for improved performance will mean that we remain focused on our goal; to constantly improve and always learn from what we’ve done in the past.