Broadland Housing has received a Sustainable Housing Label from international consultants Ritterwald. We are the first medium-sized housing association to receive the award, which recognises our strong ESG (environmental, social and governance) performance.
The Sustainable Housing Label looks at more than 40 ESG criteria that are aligned to the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing, and scrutinises sustainability across the operations of an organisation.
Broadland scored highly on tenant engagement, “ethical” considerations, and “high-quality sustainable housing, staff and tenant wellbeing and tenant representation”.
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Michael Newey, Chief Executive (right) receiving the award from Austen Reid, UK Director, Ritterwald -
High score for tenant engagement
Iain Grieve, Executive Finance Director, said:
There were some really positive things from the label application process around how we engage with our tenants, and around the communities and the surroundings of our development schemes, how we obtain feedback from our staff, and how we focus on staff wellbeing.
There’s a lot of focus on the environmental side and net zero decarbonisation, but actually it’s the wider view of ESG and sustainability that funders are interested in.
Ritterwald said that Broadland can “lead the way for other medium-sized social landlords looking to obtain an externally verified ESG accreditation”:
…A sustainability strategy has to have a strong element of engagement with residents, and Broadland was able to demonstrate it.
Austen Reid, UK director, Ritterwald
Benefits for the whole housing sector
Iain said the Sustainable Housing Label has knock-on effects for the whole sector if more housing associations apply:
There’s no need to be intimidated by something like an ESG accreditation, despite the fact that most of the holders are larger housing associations with more resources.
What we found is that, going through the process, it looks at our operation and the things we would do on a day-to-day basis anyway. It’s allowed us to benchmark our performance against other housing associations, which has been another benefit.
Ultimately, we’re all trying to achieve the same thing. It’s a really good thing to do, I think, to help us move forward together as a sector.
Read the full article in Social Housing magazine