The Sustainability Reporting Standard was launched in November 2020 to help the housing sector attract and manage ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) finance and tell its story to stakeholders. So what progress has been made one year on and what challenges lie ahead?

In the past 12 months the standard has been adopted by more than 100 organisations, with many more using it but not publishing their reports this year. Those that have publicly adopted the standard have been publishing their first reports this autumn. There is an expectation that ESG reporting will become mandatory in a few years.

Sustainability for Housing

Also, during the last year, I was appointed chair of the new board of Sustainability for Housing, the entity created to maintain, develop, and promote the standard. The other board members were then recruited to ensure we have the right skills from the finance, housing and ESG worlds to help achieve our goal. Thankfully this includes a couple of the members from the original working group that developed the standard. The National Housing Federation and Scottish Federation for Housing Associations, have also joined the board as observers. It is a very talented team.

As a group of relative strangers, without an executive or staff support to help us, I can’t say it has been easy for us to come together as a new team over Zoom, but we are making good progress. An additional challenge has been trying to generate some income to pay for the maintenance of the standard and to support early adopters. We have survived so far through generous donations (thank you!) but we need a longer-term plan for our own sustainable future.

These are all expected growing pains of an organisation having to run before it can walk, and we are managing them well. In many ways, our journey has been like those adopting the standard – getting on with things in a challenging, fast-moving world without knowing the answers to all the questions.

Key issues

I think the social housing sector is entering a new phase in its evolution with many more challenges than I faced during my 20 years as a CEO. Here are some of the key issues facing housing providers at present across ESG:

Environmental – the carbon-neutral challenge is immense and will mean social landlords have to concentrate resources more on existing homes. As a result there is a need for new financial models/partnerships to build new homes.

Social – the continued reduction in government support for the poor and vulnerable will put more pressure on landlords to fill the gaps. But how can housing providers afford to do more than they do already?

Governance – fire safety and quality require intensive investment, time and resource. The increasing expectations of tenants, the public and press will put pressure on the sector to explain its actions and choices. The launch of a revamped consumer regulation regime by the Regulator of Social Housing is only the start.