We have made considerable progress in determining how best to embed Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors within our strategy and management process.
The Sustainability and Ethics Committee has governance responsibility for identifying and mitigating climate risk, and for ESG overall. Through his role as Chairman of the Committee and CEO of Sirius Real Estate, Andrew Coombs reports and updates the Board. In her role as Chief Marketing and Impact Officer, Kremena Wissel, heads the area of ESG including chairing the ESG committee at the operating company building the link to the Sustainability and Ethics Committee of Sirius Real Estate.
Our ESG strategy & programme has been developed to help us better execute on our ESG priorities; to deliver measurable actions in a timely manner; and to focus resources in a way which is cost-effective and commercially practical.
In line with our sustainability framework, we have continued to develop and embed our environmental, social and governance (“ESG”) programme into our business and strategy.
We place our people, environmental performance, and ethical practices at the centre of our decision making, while at the same time always considering the economic sustainability of all our actions.
We believe we have made significant progress during the past financial year with our ESG programme, though we recognise we have more to do as part of our ESG journey. We plan to publish a dedicated report on our ESG strategy and actions later in this financial year to provide more context to our ambitions.
Following the acquisition of BizSpace, we are also working to integrate its platform and team into the ESG programme.
Our sustainability framework (right), first published in 2019, is overseen by the Board and the Sustainability and Ethics Committee. Economic sustainability sits at its core with the central belief that only a financially sustainable business can provide a long-term positive contribution to all our stakeholders and the environment.
ESG Materiality Assessment
While ESG has for a long time been part of our business approach, we recognise that, in certain areas, we needed to accelerate the rate at which we have reported performance.
As such, we recently undertook a formal review of our ESG activities conducted by a specialist consultancy, followed by an ESG materiality assessment. This process was designed to identify sustainability and environmental issues, risks and opportunities which have the potential to impact our business model and, ultimately, to inform the development of our ESG strategy.
The Sustainability and Ethics Committee recently reviewed the results of our first ESG materiality assessment and, on their approval, these are now being integrated into our framework and actions. The environmental and social drivers are being further embedded throughout the business as part of our developing ESG programme. The results of the materiality exercise are summarised in the following table which ranks the identified drivers of ESG in declining order of importance to our stakeholders. We engaged with a wide range of stakeholders including the Board, managers, employees, shareholders, tenants and suppliers. We were encouraged that many of the focus areas were already part of our sustainability programme, though the results of the materiality exercise, have enabled us to better understand the core areas for development and improvement.
Materiality factors |
Ranking |
Business ethics and governance (Board accountability etc…) |
1 |
Transparency and stakeholder engagement |
2 |
Carbon emissions reductions |
3 |
Modernisation / refurbishment of older properties |
4 |
Employee wellbeing |
5 |
Developing and training employees |
6 |
Water, waste, and energy management |
7 |
Longer term physical impacts of climate change |
8 |
Well defined purpose and culture |
9 |
Diversity & Inclusion |
10 |
Closer collaboration with tenants on sustainability, green leases, H&S, etc |
11 |
Biodiversity and green spaces |
12 |
Managing supply chain risks |
13 |
Local training and employment for local communities |
14 |
Community-driven collaborative projects |
15 |
This was our first assessment of materiality, and it is our intention to update and build on the findings through a triennial assessment, noting that the drivers of materiality and the relevance to our stakeholders will change over time. All of our actions are supported by our purpose, strategy and values, which continue to guide us and our behaviour in our dealings with all our stakeholders.