Peabody Group (including Peabody Trust, Peabody Capital PLC and Peabody Capital No 2 PLC)

Peabody publishes ESG report for 2022-23

Peabody has today (Tuesday 31 October) published its third environmental, social and governance (ESG) report, detailing its annual performance against the 48 criteria set out by the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing. https://www.peabodygroup.org.uk/sustainability/

The reporting standard, which Peabody helped to create, is organised into 12 key themes including: affordability and security; building safety and quality; resident voice; resident support; placemaking; climate change; ecology; resource management; structure and governance.

Highlights of the past year include:

Social

•              We spent £356m on maintaining and improving our homes, and we're planning to spend a further £2bn on our existing homes over the next five years.

•           Our rents were £621m lower than market levels, at an average of £127 per week.

•           We provided more than 600 families with a new social home.

•           We supported nearly 450 people into work as part of our £10m investment in community activities.

•           We helped 3,526 people with advice and support to improve their skills and 689 people to achieve qualifications.  

•           We awarded £1.1m in grants to support grassroots community organisations.

•           We supported 546 residents with home energy advice.

Environmental

•           We recently published our refreshed environmental sustainability strategy, setting out in detail what we'll do in the next three years to lay the foundations for getting to net zero.

•           Almost 78 percent of our homes are now rated Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) C or above.

•           Of the 2,399 new homes we completed in 2022-23, 93 percent have an EPC rating of B.

•           We continue to carefully manage the 1,200 hectares of open space we own - including more than 100,000 trees, five hectares of grazing marsh, canals, lakes, woodlands and 14 sites of nature conservation interest.

•           We invested £1.3m in refurbishing play spaces.

Governance

•           We pay all 4,000+ Peabody colleagues at least the Real Living Wage or London Living Wage.

•           We apply a 20 percent social value weighting to our scoring criteria when awarding contracts to suppliers.

•           We listen to feedback through our formal governance structures, with six residents now sitting on our Board and sub-committees and 18 on our strategic decision-making groups.

•           We've created a new Customer Engagement Co-design Action Group and now provide financial support for 65 local resident groups.

Ian McDermott, Chief Executive of Peabody, said: "We've made good progress this year, investing substantially for the benefit of residents. Our renewed local focus and increased investment in our homes and services are really starting to make a positive difference in our communities.

"I've been lucky enough to meet residents and visit communities all over London and the home counties this year, to listen to what they say about our services and more importantly act on what they're telling us.

"We look forward to continuing this work and strengthening our ESG credentials even further."

ENDS

Contact: Anthony Marriott, Director of Treasury & Corporate Finance or Ben Blades, Assistant Director Corporate Affairs