OVER the years, Andium Homes has established numerous initiatives and programmes to promote sustainability.
When we took over ownership of the social housing stock, only 75% of it met the UK minimum standard embodied in the Decent Homes Standard. We set about a major refurbishment programme, and we were able to address the backlog and bring all of the homes up to the Decent Homes Standard in 2019. The refurbishment programme had a high focus on making buildings more energy-efficient to deliver material benefits to our clients.
On top of using innovative designs and new technologies to make housing more resource-efficient, programmes and initiatives are also in place to encourage the community to adopt an environmentally responsible lifestyle.
A key strategy for us has been to focus on reducing our consumption of fossil fuels through a heating-system conversion project. As an example, we have been able to reduce heating-oil consumption from a peak of 1.7 million litres of oil in 2009 to 30,000 litres this year and zero by next year.
The transition from fossil-fuel heating to off-peak electric systems has run alongside a significant programme of improving insulation levels and installing double glazing. At the completion of a recent project, we were able to evidence that average consumption of electricity across all the homes in the building had reduced by more than 15% on average.
Every positive step on our eco journey is important and we have a number of new and exciting projects coming up, such as our partnership with Evie, and use of solar and other renewable energy sources, all of which we expect will contribute to achieving our goal of being a net-carbon-neutral business in line with government targets.
