Giant steps

Last year, Shell was told off by the Advertising Standards Agency for an advert that showed industrial chimneys pumping out charming, brightly coloured flowers.

Complaints about this kind of ‘greenwash’ - when a company tries to cover its poor record on the environment with claims about its eco-credentials - reached record levels last year. The public is increasingly vigilant about whether a company is telling the truth about being green.

For social landlords, their tenants are the public. It is essential that housing associations aren’t just seen to be green, but that they actually are making a difference.

This is where the Sustainable Homes Index For Tomorrow comes in. It is an independent benchmarking survey that has just published its first set of results. Backed by the Tenant Services Authority, the UK Green Building Council, WWF, the Bank of Scotland and the National Housing Federation, it has 16 housing association members who have declared themselves willing to have their dirty laundry hung out in public.

The associations answer a detailed questionnaire about their strategy and management, offices, new build and existing stock, followed by an assessment visit from SHIFT.

What is refreshing about the ranking, launched on 22 January, is that none of the members got anywhere near the top ranking of platinum. Four were judged worthy of silver, the rest are clustered in the bronze category.

The sector has a lot to learn about being green and this ranking leaves plenty of room for improvement. But taking part is a worthy first step on the road to sustainability. Here, the four silver winners discuss what they are doing right - and what they need to do to achieve gold in the next round.

New build

Usually the area that gets all the attention, only Bromford Group highlighted new build as a success story.

‘We’ve put a lot of time into making sure we have as little environmental impact as possible. The development team has spent a lot of time on this,’ explains Alex Dixon, group director of asset management at Bromford.

One example of those efforts is the Cross Street South development, which was deemed the best sustainable larger social housing project in the 2008 Sustainable Housing Awards. The scheme won plaudits for the biodiversity that it fostered - and heating costs were cut in half too.

Since April 2007, more than half of houses completed by the group have met level 3 of the code for sustainable homes, while 159 units (13 per cent) meet level 4.

Strategy and management

All the housing associations scored well on this one, unsurprisingly - the drive to join with SHIFT and measure sustainability comes from the top.

Gentoo Homes set up a separate division to spread sustainability throughout the housing association. That department, Gentoo Green, has been busy: the housing association came in the top 50 green companies in the first ever Sunday Times ranking last year. It was one of the first to sign up for SHIFT, while preparing for ISO 14001 accreditation.

Gentoo was rated well on its policies, strategies and training. ‘We’re lucky because of Gentoo Green - I think that investment is unique,’ says Ray Sanderson, strategic manager at Gentoo Green. The group also measured its carbon and ecological footprints last year.

Peabody Trust had a sustainability strategy before it became fashionable, publishing the first in 2002. It is working on the draft of the 2009/12 version and feeding in the information from SHIFT to improve it.

Peabody chief executive Stephen Howlett takes the lead on sustainability matters and the SHIFT feedback said that sustainability was ingrained throughout the organisation.

Wakefield & District Housing has chosen its deputy chief executive, Richard Parkin, to lead on climate change: a sign of the importance it attaches to its strategy. Progress in the area is also used as one of the quarterly indicators of its performance. ‘The board wanted to approve the climate change strategy. I report to them every six months,’ says Mr Parkin.

WDH also scored well on tenant engagement and communication. Last year’s annual tenant conference was themed around climate change and more than 100 people came to the Pontefract racecourse to take part in discussions. There were four workshops: on fuel poverty, design standards for new housing, behavioural change and communicating energy efficiency to tenants.

Mr Parkin was impressed with the contribution tenants made. ‘It was surprising how much they knew. They had ideas on recycling, gave us information on central heating - it was a learning curve for us too.’

A summer roadshow took the topic to the tenants and more than 800 filled in questionnaires. A budget of £14,000 was made available for the two events and some of the key ideas - water butts, better energy information, more recycling - will be incorporated in WDH’s climate change action plan.

Bromford Group adopted an environmental strategy in 2004 and decided to take this further in 2008 by adopting an environmental management system. It will also be trying to achieve the rigorous international green standard ISO 14001.

‘The executive summary says that we’re good at understanding what we need to do and are committed to it,’ says Alex Dixon, group director of asset management.

At a local level, Bromford has a partnership with environmental campaigning charity Encams. Through that relationship, it is working with the Audit Commission, the Housing Corporation and the Tenant Participation Advisory Service to create a national standard, which will look at environmental ‘crimes’ - such as littering and vandalism - that affect tenants’ lives and rate estates accordingly. The Rea Valley estate in Birmingham has been selected as ‘exemplar’ neighbourhood, the first in the country to get the award.

Existing buildings

Retrofitting may not get headlines, but is an essential part of going green. Peabody and Gentoo were also praised for their data capture projects.
Peabody started looking at its existing stock in 2000, assessing the whole lot for energy efficiency. There was another step forward in 2002, when the London-based landlord calculated the capacity of its houses to take photovoltaic panels.

The housing association is now working with the Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development at De Montfort University, to work out the best refurbishment options for the future. Solutions are modelled against the national target of hitting a 60 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2025 and having zero carbon Peabody communities by 2030. The work will feed into Peabody’s long-term stock investment strategy, setting out what is needed financially, politically and technically.

As well as the building fabric, Peabody is involved in creative projects around biodiversity, to make its estates more green and pleasant places to live. Since helping to establish ‘neighbourhoods green’ in 2003 - a project to spread this agenda to other social landlords - Peabody has also tried to have an impact on the ground. 

Peabody has started on a multi-million pound programme of open space enhancements to more than 40 estates and is working with housing associations Places for People and Riverside on the £17 million Big Lottery-funded ‘green spaces for people programme’, to improve more than 70 spaces across England. A project to engage residents in delivering bird conservation on selected estates, will be implemented soon.

Another measurement tool is used by Gentoo: retrofit reality, a pilot scheme of 100 homes backed by the Housing Corporation (now the TSA) as part of its Innovation and Good Practice grant scheme.

Gentoo has allocated funds of £255,000 to the project so far, with extra cash from the corporation, and will share its findings with the sector. The association is also funding two PhD students to look at tenant behaviour and technical aspects of the project.

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