We want to improve our environmental and social impact where we operate and, as social purpose is at our heart, do even more to support our customers and communities.
We believe that everyone should live in a home and a place where they feel safe, part of their community and where they can thrive. Sustainability is at the heart of that commitment, and we have set out ambitious plans to achieve net zero carbon.
Our new environmental sustainability strategy: Towards a greener future, is designed to integrate consideration of the planet and nature into everything that everyone at SNG does. This is fundamental to our vision of thriving communities, over generations.
Download and read the SNG Environmental Sustainability Strategy - November 2024 [pdf, 4MB] 
Sustainability and social impact
Reducing the carbon footprint of our homes is a significant element of our work. We understand our responsibility to these future generations, who will inherit the built environment we are investing in today. The Homes and Place Standard (co-created with our customers) is our quality standard for homes. It is explicit about the need to build in a way that is sustainable and to build homes that can be sustainably maintained.
As well as building new homes more sustainably, we’ve already embarked on a major programme of strategic asset management to implement our Homes and Place Standard for existing homes. This includes retrofitting energy-efficiency measures to homes, regeneration and selective property disposals.
Our goal is to use our long-term approach to help our customers live in warmer, safer, and more affordable homes, improving their health and wellbeing while reducing rising living costs.
SNG has one of the largest retrofit programmes in the country and we have also formed a strategic partnership with Sero to benefit from their decarbonisation modelling.
Our approach is based on developing ‘pathways’ for types of home - which consider how different measures can improve a home’s energy efficiency, affordability and the wellbeing of customers who live there. Individual surveys then enable us to create a phased plan of retrofit measures tailored for each home: explained in more detail on our Greener future page.
Combined, these measures will improve the energy efficiency rating of our existing homes and bring major benefits to customers in terms of affordability, with bills potentially falling by as much as half.
Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund
In 2023, both Network Homes and Sovereign received significant funding from the Government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF). This was set up by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to provide match-funding to social landlords nationwide to bring under-performing homes up to Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) band C.
- London and East - Network was awarded £9.8million towards improving 2,043 homes in London and Hertfordshire by making them healthier and easier to heat. The funding is paying nearly half (a total of over £19.6million) of the cost of improvements to homes in Brent and East Herts. Measures include external wall insulation, loft insulation and some underfloor insulation as well as renewals of double-glazing and doors.
- South and West - Sovereign was awarded over £9m towards a £22.5m improvement strategy for home improvement retrofit work to 1,000 homes in South and West England. The ‘fabric first’ approach includes wall insulation, heat pumps, battery storage, photovoltaic (‘solar’) panels, and ‘smart’ home controls.
Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund
In 2025, we've successfully been awarded £36.5million as a strategic delivery partner with government for its latest round of funding, the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund. This will enable us to improve 4,500 of our existing homes more quickly over the next three years. We also remain fully committed to investing significant SNG funding annually into our long-term retrofit programmes.
We are already undertaking additional pilot projects to trial different heating and hot water technologies so that we can benchmark the outcomes before rolling out future phases of this work.
We are deeply invested in the communities and the places we serve and have a long-term interest in seeing them flourish and prosper. Much of what we exist for aligns with ESG values. ESG in turn can help us measure, demonstrate and communicate our purpose and impact to the wider world.
Our first SNG Impact and Sustainability report for 2023/24 [pdf, 4MB] shows the difference we’re already making to our communities and the environment - and shares some of our plans for improving and doing more. It covers a wide range of topics: from supporting the mental health of customers to making our homes healthier, warmer and cheaper to run. It also demonstrates how we’re managing environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks.
- Environmental - how we perform as a steward of our natural environment: we’re focusing on getting to net zero, climate change, biodiversity, ecology and resource management
- Social - how we treat our people; concentrating on our customers’ voice; support for customers in terms of employment, training and placemaking, affordability, security and building safety and quality
- Governance - how we’re governed; our internal structure and financial strength; our Board and Trustees; staff wellbeing; Equality, Diversity and Inclusion; and our supply chain management.
We supported the development of the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing; a broadly accepted sector-wide approach. The standard is designed to help the housing sector measure, report and enhance its ESG performance in a transparent, consistent and comparable way. We will continue to develop our ESG approach in line with the SRS standard and wider reporting frameworks as appropriate.
You can read other previous ESG and related reports below:
- Sovereign Housing ESG report [pdf, 3MB]
- Sovereign Housing energy usage, associated emissions, energy efficiency actions and energy performance in 2022/23: Streamlined Energy and Carbon Reporting (SECR) [PDF, 4MB] .
- Sovereign Housing Carbon Balance Sheet for the 2022-23 year [PDF, 3MB] .
- Network Homes ESG report [pdf, 11MB]
You can also find more information about our Sustainable Finance Framework on the Investors webpage.
Our supply chain and other partnerships also provide wider opportunities to have a positive effect on our customers and the communities we operate in.
We use the Housing Associations’ Charitable Trust (HACT) Wellbeing Valuation and have supported it to strengthen its system to measure social impact across a wider range of housing activities.
In 2023/24 we generated over £102.3m of social value – from supporting customers into employment and training to promoting financial and digital inclusion, from providing a debt advice service and ‘cost of living’ support grants to undertaking environmental projects.
You can also read more about how we are working with our customers and partners in our first Community Impact Report [pdf, 5MB] .
We also continue to look for new opportunities and partnerships and have ambitious plans to invest £100m into communities over the next ten years through our new SNG Community Foundation. Registered with the Charity Commission, this will enable us to access new sources of funding and have an even greater impact.