• A brand-new home could be up to 57% cheaper to run, meaning you could save up to £1,410 on your bills each year, compared to an updated Victorian equivalent^.
• Our homes use the highest-rated water heating systems to ensure your water stays hotter for longer.
• We use energy-efficient lighting to reduce the energy consumption in your home by up to 80%* without compromising the quality and feel of the light they produce.

• We apply smart techniques in the home to ensure that we enhance the building's performance and recover heat, these include thermally broken lintels and Waste Water Heat Recovery.
• Our walls use the latest building techniques to keep the heat in and your bills down. Our external cavity walls are built using the latest insulation, which incorporates heat-reflecting, low-emissive technology. 
• We have received the Gold award every year since 2015, and for the fourth year in a row we are the top national housebuilder in the NextGeneration** Sustainability benchmark.
• In 2020 we achieved our highest scores for CDP*** disclosures in Climate, Water and Forests (in relation to timber sourcing). We were the only housebuilder to have improved its score from the previous year in all three categories.

To reduce water use in your homes we install innovative and water-efficient appliances in all our homes. These enable you to reduce your water consumption compared to a Victorian house by around 24% per person per day without feeling different. When you move in, we provide you with helpful information about how to make the most of the appliances we provide, along with further advice on how you could live a more sustainable lifestyle, using less water.

• We purchase materials which reduce carbon emissions in our supply chain and make use of recycled content to reduce waste and raw material use.
• 99.9% of our timber procured through central timber agreements is responsibly sourced, minimising deforestation^^.
• We always try to minimise our impact on the local and wider environment as much as we can so we use thermal and acoustic insulating materials and other substances that have a Zero Ozone Depletion Potential and low or zero Global Warming Potential. This means that no harmful materials are used in their manufacture†.
• We work with suppliers who have or are working towards ISO14001 - the world’s most established standard for environmental management

We strive to ensure that our day-to-day practices also reflect our commitment to sustainability. For example, we recognised an industry need to reduce waste from the use of plasterboard. Working with our valued suppliers, such as British Gypsum, we developed a neat solution to resize the plasterboard in a way that greatly reduces the off cuts from every board. By implementing this across our developments, we have reduced construction waste by 322 tonnes in 2020, as well as the emissions associated with manufacturing and transportation.

As well as this, the kitchen cabinets provided by Symphony, one of our kitchen suppliers, are made from a range of 49% - 100% recycled materials and they have replaced over 4 million plastic corner protectors on our deliveries with sustainable alternatives.

The result of all of this, and many more innovations from us and our suppliers, our new homes are not only comfortable for you but they also minimise the impact on our planet too.

Nature is of great importance to us too. Through our national partnership with the RSPB, the UK’s largest nature conservation charity, we’ve found ways to embed nature friendly design and planting across all our developments. We take pride in our conservation efforts for endangered species.

Breeding numbers of swifts in the UK have almost halved in twenty years. With clever solutions such as installing the industry-first swift bricks into homes, these beautiful birds will have a safe place to nest, further supporting our biodiversity commitments.

In 2020, we purchased 897 swift nesting boxes and aim to include 2,000 in our developments by the end of 2023

We have also made a commitment to include hedgehog highways in all of our developments, having already purchased over 500. This will allow hedgehogs to safely pass in between our homes which will support habitat creation and reverse hedgehog population decline.

We are also helping save the British honeybee, by landscaping our green areas with bee-friendly plants and flowers. As well as making green spaces more pleasant, trees, shrubs and climbers help support local wildlife.

In 2020 across our developments, we created 233 hectares of greenspace (the equivalent of 333 football pitches) and planted or retained 553,921 trees or shrubs. These changes can also have a positive effect on your wellbeing as many studies now show that green spaces can reduce blood pressure and stress.

It is also suggested that green spaces boost levels of physical activity, resulting in a happier and healthier lifestyle. Good for you and the environment too.

We know it’s important that where you live is a safe environment, so you can enjoy life at home and in your neighbourhood happy and worry free. This is why we work further to ensure safety is of the upmost importance to us too.

We have many initiatives to increase safety across our developments, including designing roads that encourage drivers to maintain a 20mph speed limit; and ensuring there is sufficient external lighting around our homes and neighbourhoods so you feel safe and secure.