Sustainability at Vistry Group - Vistry Group Careers

Making Vistry through Sustainability.

Our purpose is to deliver sustainable homes and communities across all sectors of the UK housing market. Our sustainability strategy helps us to deliver this purpose and we’ve set ambitious targets.

Our sustainability strategy

Our sustainability strategy is split into three priority areas; People, Operations, Homes and Communities.

The strategy focuses on the key sustainability issues most important to our Group and our Stakeholders. This means it’s relevant to our business and also focussed on the areas where we can have the most impact.

Our strategy covers key issues such as climate change, waste and resources biodiversity, diversity and inclusion, health and wellbeing as well as placemaking and delivering social value. Placemaking and social value are crucial for providing sustainable homes and communities across all sectors of the UK housing market. We recognise that sustainability issues are interlinked. So, our approach to biodiversity and social value helps to enhance our placemaking strategies.
Our achievements against 2021 targets
- Creation of new roles: Head of Sustainability, Head of Technical Innovation and Head of Social Value
- A new strategy for people development
- A Learning Management System that maximises employee learning opportunities
- An employee wellbeing programme
- Our National charity partnership was with MIND – since 2019 we have raised over £250,000
- A D&I strategy
- A retained recycling rate of over 95%
- Invested in charities and community organisations
- An action plan to achieve 10% bio-diversity net gain across the Group
- A roadmap and target for all homes to be designed to Net-Zero Carbon standards
- A year-on-year increase in additional affordable homes delivered beyond policy compliance, as part of Project 6000
- Investment in a sustainability data platform and social value portal
- Signed up to the Business Ambition for 1.5°C and committed to science-based targets
- Established our baseline for carbon and waste
- Joined the UK Green Building Council
- Became a corporate member of IEMA and an approved IEMA training centre
- Increased awareness through internal communications, including a Sustainability Week
- Linked sustainability to executive remuneration
- Developed a climate change policy

Our sustainability targets 2021-2025

Within the three areas of people, operations and homes and communities we have several targets. Three that stand out are jobs and training, affordability and our scope 1 and 2 carbon reduction targets. These stand out not necessarily because they are more important than the others but because we’ve chosen to link these to our staff remuneration and our sustainability linked loan.

Jobs & Training

We want to increase the number of learners passing through our on-site skills academy – aiming for 550 by 2025.

Waste

We want to reduce construction waste, aiming for a 20% reduction in waste tonnes per plot by 2025. We also want to increase construction waste diversion from landfill, with 100% of non-hazardous construction waste diverted by 2025.

Resources

We want to increase the reuse of construction materials, aiming for a 2022 launch of a reuse database for sites.

Climate Change

We want to reduce scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions, aiming for a 16.8% reduction by 2025 against a 2021 baseline. We also want to reduce scope 3 emissions, aiming for a 22.4% reduction by 2025 against a 2021 baseline.

Product Design & Life Cycle Management: Operational Energy

We want to reduce carbon emissions from regulated energy of new homes, aiming for between 75% to 80% reduction in CO2e in new homes planned by 2025.

Product Design & Life Cycle Management: Embodied Carbon

We want to set a target for reducing embodied carbon in line with the science-based target initiative reduction pathway.

Social Value & Placemaking

We want to use our social value portal on every new land acquisition >500 units and on every project with an on-site skills academy.

Ecology

We want to ensure every site has a completed Biodiversity Action Plan.

Affordability

We want to deliver a year-on-year increase in additional affordable homes beyond our planning compliance requirement, with a year-on-year increase by 2025.