Welcome to our 2023/24 Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Report.
With over 37,000 homes, nearly 2,000 colleagues working across the south of England and London, and a network of suppliers and contractors, we know we’ve got a huge responsibility to deliver against these three themes aligned with our purpose as a housing association.
Our sector is facing lots of challenges and we’re having to strike a sensible balance of making sure our homes are safe and as comfortable as possible, that we’re delivering as many new affordable homes as we can, while also ensuring our homes, spaces and employee offer are sustainable in every sense of the word.
As you’ll see in this year’s Report, we’ve continued to make sure ESG principles are integrated through every step of building, managing and maintaining our homes for our customers and through our Group services. As we’ve done in the past few years, we’ve benchmarked ourselves against the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) and indexed our delivery against the Sustainability Reporting Standard (SRS) for social housing. You’ll see how we’ve continued to make good strides against all the various areas such as Climate Change, Resident Voice, and Staff wellbeing, reflecting our dedication to creating long-term value for our customers while contributing positively to society and the environment. Our success in this space has also been noted by Morgan Stanley Capital International (MSCI) in its A rating and Sustainalytics’ ‘Low Risk’ rating when it comes to ESG delivery. We are confident that our new Sustainability Strategy will help us drive even more efficiencies and improvements to see our credentials build considerably over time.
As always, capturing and listening to customer voice is critical in guiding us on these themes. Our customers help us make sure we‘re driving improvements in the right places, that ultimately benefit them and create safe spaces to live in. So, whether it’s upgrading our homes to be more energy efficient, piloting new innovative technologies to see what works in practice, or how we’re considering biodiversity net gain from planning and construction through to managing our estates, we’re always making sure customers are engaged on the journey.
It's through this feedback loop and learnings from both our customers and colleagues, that we’re able to shape plans for the future so that we can achieve our vision of ‘everyone has a home’. We can only do that through our main strength; our people. We’re committed to providing a strong Aster Offer which attracts and retains the best people to deliver the best service possible and welcome and celebrate diversity in all its forms. This coupled with providing homes that are built and maintained to last, should mean they and our business is sustainable for our customers into the future.
Looking at some highlights from this year:
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We’re still committed to reach net zero by 2050 through our own long-term sustainability roadmap and are on track to meet and exceed our goal of making sure our homes have an energy performance certificate (EPC) rating of C or above by 2030. Currently 85.1% of our homes meet this standard. This compares favourably to the 72% of homes achieving EPC C across the housing association sector as a whole. 99.02% of the new homes we build are EPC B.
- Strong governance - our G1/V1 rating has been reaffirmed and we have been implementing changes from the independent governance review.
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Our Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund Wave 2 project exceeded delivery targets meaning we have been able to add more homes to the project and secure additional funding for their delivery.
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We’ve continued to evolve our flexible working offer for our people and ensured our office space is used efficiently to meet the changing needs of our business while minimising energy consumption and carbon emissions.
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Social purpose runs through our core and that’s reflected in the fact that 68% of our homes across our communities are for social rent.
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Beyond providing, housing, care and support services, our brands and charities are making a positive impact in our communities. Nearly 5,000 people were positively impacted by the Aster Foundation programmes, Enham Trust supported over 6,900 individuals through services which promote equality, dignity and choice and supporting disabled people to live, work and enjoy life as independently as possible and EBHT Supported Living Team delivered over 41,500 hours of support and care to adults with a learning disability and or mental health need.
We hope you enjoy exploring our ESG report this year. We know there is so much more to be done, and work is well underway to drive even more positive change across our business so we can make a valuable contribution to society and the environment.
