Pioneering sustainability and biodiversity reporting in housing
GIS is a vital tool allowing any housing association to integrate its datasets and manage its assets through location. Southern Housing is taking this one step further and is pioneering the use of ArcGIS to monitor and report on multiple regulatory KPIs, gauge ESG performance and demonstrate how it is fulfilling its ambitious sustainability and biodiversity objectives.
With a single repository for data staff can better understand assets and quickly answer incoming queries
Homes needing energy performance improvements can be quickly identified supporting better EPC ratings
Biodiversity changes can be recorded supporting the regulatory BNG uplifts mandated for new housing developments
The Challenge
Southern Housing is one of the largest housing associations in the UK, owning and managing over 78,000 homes across London, the South East, the Isle of Wight and the Midlands.
Formed in 2022 from the merger between Optivo and Southern Housing Group, it is a not-for-profit organisation with charitable status. The company’s funders support its long-term investment in communities, with sustainability and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) considerations embedded in its culture and strategies.
Since the merger, significant progress has been made to analyse, amalgamate and harmonise asset data from each of the merging companies, supported by GIS. A significant challenge for the sector is the increasing demand from investors for sustainability information and the substantial amount of data required for ESG and KPI monitoring and reporting, which Southern Housing has made great progress towards.
The UK government has set a target for social housing providers to achieve a minimum Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of C for rented ‘fuel poor’ properties by 2030. Therefore, up-to-date information, or ‘EPC snapshots’, is vital for the Sustainability Team to target improvement plans effectively and enhance energy efficiency in underperforming properties alongside other major investments.
Furthermore, the organisation is committed to ambitious standards of sustainability, having set out its long-term vision and science-based targets in its Environmental Sustainability Strategy and Biodiversity Pathway. This includes efforts to improve biodiversity values across its holdings, which requires monitoring and reporting.
“Not only do we need to better understand our assets and responsibilities, we have to regularly monitor and report on multiple regulatory KPIs, gauge our ESG performance and demonstrate how we are fulfilling our commitments in our Environmental Sustainability Strategy,” said Bethany Austin, Sustainability and Reporting Manager.
“ArcGIS is a powerful tool to help us measure the sustainability of our homes. We are not only fulfilling regulatory or investor reporting requirements but also demonstrating our clear commitment to improving our homes and communities for our residents.”
Kara Tomes Meek, Head of Sustainability, Southern Housing
The Solution
The Sustainability Team at Southern Housing has effectively utilised ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online to develop dashboards that geographically collate, visualise, and report data. This GIS-led approach is particularly valuable following the merger of the two companies' assets, providing a centralised base for data integration. Despite this centralisation, assets can still be examined individually, which is essential for specific queries, such as those from local authorities and other key stakeholders focusing on particular areas.
Detailed insights are readily accessible thanks to Ordnance Survey (OS) AddressBase®, including the energy performance profile of homes. OS’s addressing product matches 29 million Royal Mail postal addresses to unique property reference numbers (UPRN), bringing a geographical dimension to matched records. As a Strategic Partner to OS, Esri UK supports the use of OS data in the ArcGIS System including ready-to-use offline data and connectors for OS APIs and tools so customers can process the data themselves.
For Southern Housing, for instance, using ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online, users can identify geographic clusters of homes that are close to achieving Band C. They can also determine specific wall constructions, such as cavity walls, to target specific measures, such as cavity wall insulation, through retrofit programmes.
Flood risk management is another critical function. Properties can be classified as high, medium, or low risk based on the Environment Agency's flood risk maps. This enables proactive measures to mitigate flood risk to create resilient communities such as promoting the Environment Agency’s flood alerts to residents living in areas of flood risk areas.
In support of its sustainability objectives and biodiversity action plan, Southern Housing has mapped its greenspaces using the OS MasterMap Topography Layer which gives users access to the most detailed, current and comprehensive dataset of Great Britain. During the development of its Biodiversity Pathway, a natural asset audit was conducted to establish a baseline for natural asset improvement. Utilising the Living Atlas and the SHIFT methodology, the team estimated the total biomass across all housing assets to be 14,487 tonnes. Over 26,000 homes with private gardens further support biodiversity.
ArcGIS proves to be an ideal tool for measuring Biodiversity Net Gain (BNG), ensuring compliance with new regulations. By measuring biodiversity before and after the construction of new housing developments and comparing the two, Southern Housing will be able to demonstrate the required 10 percent BNG improvement.
These activities underpin Southern Housing’s key metric: ‘30 by 30 by 2030’. The organisation aims to protect and support 30 flora and fauna species (selected in different regions as indicators of thriving diversity) by delivering 30 habitat creation and enhancement projects annually until 2030. ArcGIS will continue to be instrumental in curating, managing, and presenting the data that supports these initiatives.
“GIS is vital to help us map, manage, record and report on our biodiversity action plans. Most importantly, it is demonstrating how we are delivering against our main metric of supporting 30 flora and fauna species by creating and enhancing 30 habitats by 2030.”
Kerry Briffitt, Biodiversity & Sustainability Projects Lead, Southern Housing
Benefits
Optimised asset management
With a single repository for asset data, staff can better understand assets and responsibilities and quickly answer incoming queries. This is of greater importance given the increased size of the organisation following the merger of Southern Housing Group and Optivo, with over 78,000 homes.
‘Our pioneering work with complex datasets and the use of ArcGIS enables us to understand the performance of our property portfolio in detail. This enables us to make informed strategic decisions that will deliver improvements to our residents and wider benefits’. Dritan Uka, Director of Strategic Asset Management, Southern Housing.
Delivering on EPC requirements
The use of ArcGIS to measure and map the energy performance of its homes enables the identification of areas for improvement and supports decision-making at both local and senior strategic levels. The Sustainability and Capital Investment Teams can respond accordingly to undertake necessary improvements to move properties from Band D or below to Band C.
Demonstrating Biodiversity Net Gain
Using GIS, Southern Housing will be able to measure and record biodiversity before and after new housing developments are built, facilitating the required regulatory reporting and supporting other internal and external stakeholder updates. They will be able to demonstrate and map metrics showing how a development site is left in a measurably better state than before the development began by mapping new wildlife habitats, plants, and insects. They’re aiming to use GIS to apply the same monitoring methodology to all habitat enhancements going forward.
Monitoring and reporting sustainability metrics
ArcGIS will be used to support reporting around the organisation’s science-based targets detailed in its Environmental Sustainability Strategy and Biodiversity Pathway. The organisation's goal of delivering ‘30 by 30 by 2030’ involves communicating these biodiversity management successes to multiple stakeholders, including the communities and housing developments where new initiatives are being implemented.
