We have today (03/10/22) published our first impact report detailing our progress in placing sustainability at the heart of everything we do.

The report, Building a Sustainable Future, sets out our sustainability story so far, through an approach aimed at promoting accountability and transparency for its customers, colleagues, funders and partners.

It takes a holistic but evidence-based approach that captures a range of environmental, social and governance issues. These include progress against targets to make our homes more energy efficient and cheaper to run for customers, efforts to address homelessness and the work of neighbourhood coaches to help customers to thrive, right through to our commitment to becoming a greener and more diverse business that is funded through sustainable finance.

The report has a clear alignment to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and is structured around our three central sustainability reporting pillars:

Sustainable Finance Framework: the first in the sector to be accredited by S&P
Sustainability-linked loans: the first business to link borrowing to targets around gender pay gap, and the first in the social housing sector to link to a governance metric
Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing: adoption of a sector standard that promotes consistency and comparability for stakeholders.

Chief executive Robert Nettleton said:

Sustainability has been a priority at Bromford for some time now – shaping the way the business operates to better protect the environment and the society around us, while ensuring that what we do today doesn’t compromise where we want to get to tomorrow. Like many businesses out there, sustainability reporting is a relatively new concept for us, but one we are firmly committed to delivering and evolving. This impact report demonstrates that commitment, helping us tell a clearer story while providing greater transparency and accountability to our stakeholders.

A central audience for the social housing sector’s sustainability reporting is the investor community, who are themselves required to report on the environmental and social performance and risk profile of their borrowers.

We plan to raise £1bn of private finance over the next decade, all of which will be raised under the sustainability banner. The report sets out progress against two sustainability-linked loans worth £125m and linked to improving energy efficiency in our homes and in reducing the gender pay gap and the report updates its performance against these, with savings of more than £100,000 expected to be generated.

Director of treasury Imran Mubeen said:

We will be issuing all of our future funding through our Sustainable Finance Framework and expect to return to the capital markets in the next 12-18 months. We wanted to take the opportunity to establish this framework, and demonstrate progress through our impact report, ahead of time to demonstrate our commitment to sustainability, and the fundamental role it plays in driving all of our business activity.

We have already identified a number of areas for future development and we will engage with investors to further analyse our sustainability data to identify key focal points and sharpen our data collection over time.

We are delighted to commit to the Sustainability Reporting Standard (SRS) and look forward to influencing future iterations as reporting continues to grow to meet the developing challenges and demands of our sector.

Laura Johnson, director of strategic property planning and chair of Bromford’s sustainability group, said that the report demonstrates the areas where the organisation is currently performing and where it needs to do more.

We see the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing (SRS) as a valuable wraparound tool that captures our broader ESG considerations, and can help to demonstrate where we perform well and where we need to do more work.

We have reported against all 48 of the SRS criteria in our first year. In some cases, we know there is work to be done, whether that be around our data collection or driving up our performance. We welcome that challenge and are confident we can deliver for our communities.

We also hope that our colleagues and customers welcome this step towards greater transparency and intend to engage further with them on these sustainability issues, which in so many cases affect their everyday lives.

The report reveals that we have:

increased the number of homes with an energy efficiency rating of C or better to 86%
brought forward our target to reach 100% of homes at this standard by two years to 2028
let more than 18% of homes to homeless households in the past year
maintained a ratio of one neighbourhood coach to 175 households, allowing us to build individual relationships so people and communities can thrive
begun the electrification of our vehicle fleet, with plans to increase this to 70% of fleet by 2025
provided gas and fire safety inspections to 100% of homes in the past year
marginally closed gender pay gap from 7.4% to 7.2% year-on-year

Read the full Sustainability Impact Report