Together Housing has published its latest Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) report for 2022/23. Last year, we published our first ever ESG report, and we committed to publishing a report annually to show our progress in achieving our ESG aims.
The report shows what we have achieved during 2022/23, in what was a challenging year, particularly for our residents. With energy bills rising for many, the finances of our residents have been squeezed. Over the year, we generated £6.54m of additional income for residents through our Welfare Benefits Team and Tenancy Sustainability Team. Supporting the wider community, around 3,000 households were supported with fuel vouchers through our charity, Newground Together, with a scheme value of over £383,853. During the year, we opened the new Employment Hub in Blackburn town centre which will help expand Newground Together’s employment support provision, making services more accessible for local people. We are confident that our Cost of Living Strategy will provide a useful vehicle for ensuring the support we provide to residents is coherent, consistent and meets their needs.
We continue to focus on improving our existing homes, building new homes, and improving our offer to our communities. We built 346 new affordable homes in 2022/23, all of which were rated at least EPC B. We also improved the EPC rating of 1,030 homes that were previously EPC D or below and transitioned 458 homes onto renewable heating systems. We are scaling up our decarbonisation retrofit work, with the help of the government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, ensuring that our homes are efficient and that our residents are better able to afford to heat their homes.
We are investing in our communities, with further progress made on our ambitious Placeshaping Strategy, combining estate regeneration with opportunity creation, including around employment and training and community spaces, building strong and positive relationships with residents.
We are proud of what we have achieved over the year, and we will keep going on the road to continuous improvement.