Octavia Housing’s green ethos continues in the spirit of its founder, Octavia Hill, a Victorian social reformer who changed the face of social housing and campaigned for clean air in London, laying the foundations for the 1956 clean air act. Over 100 years on, Hill’s environmental principals continue to influence our work in creating an organisation that ‘our tenants really value.’
Our green approach
We aim to reduce our environmental impact in all areas, including:
- Strategy and management
- Office practices
- Existing buildings; and
- New buildings.
Read our environmental strategy to find out more about our plans for 2010-2013.
Going green
In 2007 we launched the largest single photovoltaic system of any housing association in the UK at our head office. The generation of clean onsite electricity dramatically cut our CO2 emissions by almost 20 tonnes a year.
Chief Executive Grahame Hindes said:
‘We believe that housing is as much about people as it is buildings. We strive for excellent social care and with our own PV system we wanted to set an example of positive environmental practice, a vital element of such care. We were looking for an effective and low maintenance way to cut carbon emissions – with PV being pretty much ‘fit and forget’ we went for it.’
We have also introduced cycle-to-work schemes, LPG smart cars, the recycling of most of our office waste and a more flexible printing system that saves paper and energy.
New builds
All our new build properties meet the Code for sustainable homes level 3 – from 2011 will meet the new level 4 requirements and from 2015 the higher level 6 requirements.
Existing homes
Of our existing homes, most are now at Decent Homes level. We have also undertaken insulation programmes to 45% of our properties and introduced energy efficiency measures to 8%. We have also joined SHIFT, a sustainability benchmarking and best practice learning network.
We know that we need to improve the energy efficiency of our existing homes and have undertaken The Princedale Project as a way to kick-start these improvements in an innovative way that can be of use to landlords across the country.
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