Greener, safer, better
We’re committed to working in a sustainable way across all that we do at settle, making sure this delivers real benefits for our residents and communities. The government has put in place sustainability targets including for all homes to achieve EPC Energy Band C by 2030. We had already started working towards these targets, in 2019/20 committing an extra £16 million by 2025 to help us achieve them. During 2020/21we progressed work on our sustainability strategy, which we launched in April 2021.
Our sustainability strategy builds on the work we have done already to outline the areas we will focus on until 2025. We will:
- Reduce the number of residents in fuel poverty
- Invest in existing homes
- Build new sustainable homes
- Support the local economy
- Use our focus on sustainability to attract and retain colleagues to work at settle.
SHIFT Award
We were pleased to announce in April 2021 that we have been awarded the Silver accreditation for our first assessment by SHIFT, the sustainability standard for the housing sector. The award recognises the work we have already undertaken to embed sustainability across settle, with recommendations meaning that we have a clear plan to achieving our target of a Gold award by 2025. The SHIFT assessment monitors how we are delivering against challenging environmental targets, such as carbon emissions, water use and landfill waste, and helps us improve our performance. We will continue to work on delivering our sustainability strategy. Priorities for us have included understanding more about how settle residents might be experiencing fuel poverty and what we can do to help, along with continuing energy performance surveys across our properties to guide where we need to make improvements.
Rising fuel costs
Are you worried about being able to keep your home warm?
At the time of publishing this report in November 2021, there is a lot of information in the news about rising fuel costs and how this might make it more expensive to heat your home. Our purpose at settle is to help our residents live comfortably in your homes, and we know that being able to keep your home warm is an important part of this. If you have concerns about being able to keep your home warm, please get in touch and our colleagues will do all they can to help you.
Giving something back days
Social purpose is at the heart of settle. Our colleagues volunteer their time through ’Giving something back’ days, helping residents and communities in extra ways beyond their day-to-day work. Colleagues are supported to take at least two giving something back days each year. During 2020/21, colleagues delivered over 100 giving something back days, volunteering their time across a range of activities from renovating a school playground, helping at food banks and supporting reading in schools and libraries.
Helping you live comfortably in your home
We want to support all residents to be comfortable in your homes. One of the ways we do that is through investing in minor changes like grab rails and over bath showers to help residents to continue to live independently in your homes. Last year we invested £350,000 in this. We also work with Herts Home Improvement Agency who can help with home adaptations like stairlifts and accessible showers.