On the 20th May Convene held another webinar in our Governance, Risk and Compliance Network series. This webinar was about what’s next for ESG in Housing; Arturo Dell was joined by Anna Haskins, from the Good Economy, to look at the future of ESG Reporting in Housing.
ESG is a topic that is essential to the longevity of the sector, so it’s crucial to discuss what more can be done to ensure the important work of ESG is not neglected.
The webinar covered the sectors’ current ESG performance, feedback on how reporting has gone, and any questions surrounding the future of the SRS.
It began with an introduction from Arturo Dell about why we built the GRC Network and the opportunity the webinar brought to go back to talking about ESG. The GRC Network exists as a place to share with experts and learn from best practice, to ask questions in a high-trust environment, to provide different perspectives and to make the most of people’s time in the sector.
Then Arturo introduced Anna Haskins from The Good Economy, who first spoke about what the SRS is and why it was created. Due to growing interest from lenders and investors in ESG opportunities, a lack of consistency in how Housing Providers reported ESG performance, and the lack of capabilities to communicate their ESG stories, the SRS was created. It provides a consistent, credible and transparent way to report, for Housing Providers, by Housing Providers.
Anna Haskins then gave an overview of the SRS, depicted below, and described how since Version 2.0 in October 2023 they have moved towards a comply or explain approach. She also announced that they would be updating their guidance in the SRS criteria later this month.
She then spoke about the SRS in practice, and the feedback they have received from users. For first time reporters a lot of the SRS was a coordination task, but the process became much more streamlined the more they reported. She explained how the first report sets the internal baseline for data coverage and performance, and that most providers, even smaller ones, are able to report against the majority of the criteria.
The SRS Adopters community has grown steadily, with 132 Housing Providers using it that oversee close to 2.6 million homes. Anna then went on to explain what the SRS reports tell us about how the sector is doing, featuring their findings since the SRS was first adopted.
The results from the environmental criteria show that the energy efficiency of housing stock has marginally improved over the last few years, as result of retrofit works and the delivery of energy efficient new-build housing. Additionally, although three quarters of Adopter stock has achieved EPC C or higher, housing providers still have a long way to go to retrofit the remaining 410k homes with EPC D or lower. Alongside this, housing providers continue to report inconsistently on their Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions.
It’s clear from this there’s still more to be done, with 44% of Housing Providers having a strategy for waste management, 39% have a strategy to manage and reduce pollutants, 40% have a strategy to use responsibly sourced materials, and 33% have a strategy for water management.
The results from the social criteria of the SRS show that the sector continues to provide rents that are significantly below market rates. Moreover, of the 36k new homes delivered in 2024, affordable rent continues to see the greatest allocation (29%), alongside low-cost home ownership (29%) and followed by social rent units (24%).
For providers reporting for consecutive years, there has been a consistent increase in social rent allocation, despite challenges such as funding constraints and rising construction costs. Other information reporting has gathered includes that the average number of complaints upheld by the Ombudsman in 2024 was 24.4 per housing provider, a significant increase from 9.3 in 2023.
The results from the governance criteria shows that the gender pay gap in the social housing sector has been narrowing over the years but still exists. The average gap rose slightly in 2024 but still follows a long-term downward trend, when compared to 2022. On average, 44% of the Board is female, 10% is BAME, 8% have a disability and 7% identify as LGBTQ+, which is commendable but can be improved.
Alongside this, 87% of adopting housing providers pay the Real Living Wage, with providers that previously didn’t in 2021 now doing so.
It is also important to note that the above results have remained mostly stationary over the past 3 reporting years, which means while things are stable they are also not improving.
After delving into what the data shows us, Anna also discussed what Housing Providers have said about their ESG performance. With the SRS, it made it easier to capture and compare performance over time, it ignited action to improve performance, and funders benefitted from more ESG information.
Then, Gemma Walford gave a demo of Convene ESG, Convene’s own ESG reporting platform. She explained why we built Convene ESG, that customers were asking for help in simplifying the reporting process and capturing information. Also, that organisations needed help in telling their ESG story within the report. Convene ESG built the SRS into the system, and strove to help Housing organisations stay on top of the latest frameworks, labels and version of standards.
Alongside this, Convene ESG was developed to ease workflow and embed ESG into company culture, make it easier for data owners to add data and narratives, show progress during the reporting cycle and generate, in one click, accurate reports.
After the demo, Arturo came back in to do a Q&A with Anna Haskins. Anna was asked about the SRS’ use of EPCs, and how it compares to GRESB using actual energy data and whether the SRS plans to incorporate similar metrics. Anna then discussed about the inter-relationship of ESG reporting standards, and that while the SRS as a standard encourages organisation to enhance their reporting and the detail of their data, the EPC is useful as a standardised approach and makes the standard more accessible, so they will be continuing using that for now.
Then Arturo asked the all important question about the place of the ESG in the sector, if it is being viewed as less of a priority and a focus now. Anna answered that although her perspective might be biased as someone who works in sustainability, she felt like people are understanding it’s more than just nice to report but in fact crucial.
She stated although the hype and appeal might have died down a little and ESG is being perceived differently now, it is still important and there is still a big push from a compliance perspective. Alongside this, there is also an issue to address in the divergence of how people approach ESG, some are pushing for more while others are overwhelmed. Arturo agreed about the importance of keeping ESG in the conversation as priority.
Arturo asked a final question about benchmarking, and where it is going next, and Anna discussed the importance of benchmarking in understanding where an organisation is on their journey, and less in terms of comparing with others. She spoke about how benchmarking was helpful for organisations internally, and then to tell a collective story.
The webinar ended with Gemma sharing Convene’s upcoming attendance of the Housing Governance Conference in June, and inviting all attendees to our next webinar on Board assurance of skills, diversity of thought and experience.
If you’d like to learn more about how Convene and Convene ESG can help your Housing association, you can join our Governance, Risk and Compliance Network and be a part of our community today.
