Over the next decade, we’ll invest in making our customers’ homes warmer, greener and fit for the future, while reducing our impact on the environment and building a more sustainable organisation.
Our sustainability strategy for 2026-2036 brings all that together to support our longer-term ambition to become a net zero carbon organisation by 2050. To do this, we’re focusing on three main areas: our environment, our communities and our future.
If you’re one of our customers, this will mean warmer, more energy-efficient homes that are ready for the future and more resilient to the impacts of climate change and rising energy costs.
We’re looking at our own impact too, including the vehicles we drive, the places we work, what we buy and what we throw away. We’ve already started making changes to embed sustainability into everything we do.
We’ve set ourselves some big targets and ambitions for the next ten years, and because we know a lot can change in that time, we’ll review the strategy every two years to keep us on track. Some of the key ones include:
- All our existing homes reaching EPC C or above by 2030, helping make them more energy efficient.
- Planning how our customers’ homes can move away from gas heating after 2030 as we switch towards lower-carbon heating.
- Supporting green skills for our colleagues and local businesses.
- Improving customer access to green spaces and exploring reuse and recycling hubs in our communities.
- All our new developments being net zero carbon by 2035.
- Making all our workplaces net zero carbon by 2034.
- Making half of our vehicle fleet electric by 2033.
- Becoming a zero-waste-to-landfill organisation by 2035.
Some of these changes are already taking shape, including in the new homes we’re building at our first gas-free developments in Bridlington, Amotherby and Holme-on-Spalding-Moor. Instead of traditional gas boilers, these homes are being built with air source heat pumps, solar panels and high levels of insulation. These technologies will be standard in all our future new-build homes, helping improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions.
We know the green spaces around our customers’ homes help create good places to live, while giving plants and wildlife somewhere to thrive too.
So, we want to work with our customers to improve the natural environment and access to green spaces, while introducing more wildlife features including bee, swift and bat bricks. We’re also looking at things like water capture and community orchards as part of new developments.
We already have nearly 20,000 homes across Yorkshire and improving these is a big part of our plans too.
One of our biggest commitments is for all our existing homes to reach EPC C or above by 2030, and we’re already at 85%. This target builds on work already underway through our YH Homes 2.0 programme, investing in features like triple-glazed windows, better insulated doors, environmental sensors, smart ventilation, battery storage, electric vehicle charging and low-carbon heating for existing homes.
A lot of work has gone into getting the strategy underway. It’s a ten-year plan, so we know we won’t do everything at once. There’ll be plenty to learn along the way and we want our customers to be part of that, so we’ll keep listening as our plans develop.
Here's the link if you want to read the sustainability strategy in full.