SfH board members Brendan Sarsfield and Julie McDowell spoke this week at an Inside Housing webinar which looked at the challenges of ESG reporting.

‘ESG Reporting: Cutting Through The Complexity’ provided Brendan and Julie with an opportunity to demonstrate how the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing (SRS) has worked in practice.

Brendan and Julie have noted some of the key messages from the event below:

• Good management of ESG issues is essential to the success of HAs, who need to respond to increased expectations from government and other stakeholders on how they manage environmental and social impacts as well as how they are governed 

• There is now consensus that ESG reporting has become important for housing associations and more are considering how they can demonstrate their ESG work

• For smaller HAs who aren’t yet being asked by funders for ESG information, the SRS is a useful framework for identifying and reporting on key issues in a user friendly way to employees, customers and communities

• HAs appear to be increasingly are aware of the wider context and the influence of international standards on ESG

Brendan and Julie would like to thank Inside Housing for inviting them to speak at this important event.