Abri recognises that we have a role to play in the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, making a positive impact to the communities in which we operate is embedded within our corporate strategy, the goals summarised below focus on where we feel we can make the most impact and which are the most closely related to our business.
Goal 1: No Poverty
Everyone has the right to a safe, warm, and sustainable home, equal opportunity must exist for communities so that everyone can have improved life changes. We know that some of our communities are not getting the chance to thrive, with reduced life chances and not enough support to succeed. As a result we have developed community investment plans in eight zones containing approximately 9,000 of our homes in the top 20% most deprived communities in England. Our aim - to bring about change and build social cohesion.
Abri’s Tenancy Sustainment team aims to help, encourage, and guide our customers, to enable them to sustain and manage their homes now and in the future. In addition we have secured extra items for our customers such as white goods and furniture, these essential goods go towards creating homes.
During 2020/2021 we secured £4.6m in extra income for 2,508 households and issued £6k in heating vouchers to more than 100 families. We secured £131,000 external funding to support our community programmes and leveraged £526,000 of external funding to support our employment programmes to help people escape from poverty. During the year we also supported:
- 303 people into employment
- 689 people onto training
- 548 people with CV checks and other employability support
- 189 people to attend self-employment training (10 Create mentors provided 125 support sessions, totalling 207 hours, to 45 mentees)
- 68 businesses to begin trading
Goal 2: Zero Hunger
The financial year 2020/2021 was a challenging time, unlike anything we’ve ever faced before; Covid-19 having a profound effect on the lives of our customers. We’ve seen record numbers of families visit food banks, require benefits support and face job uncertainty. But our customers are resilient, and our colleagues determined to help. We’ve supported our communities and they’ve continued to thrive thanks to residents taking the lead where they live. Our community cafés were turned into food distribution hubs. The teams worked with local authority partners, volunteers and FareShare to deliver and distribute over 2,000 meals to support schools, essential workers, and vulnerable residents.
We provided funding to food banks, community centres, and social enterprises to support our communities navigating the impact of Covid-19. Abri’s Café 1759 joined a scheme to reduce food waste, saving an estimated 400 crates of bakery, cakes, fresh fruit, salad, flowers and vegetables from being sent to landfill. We delivered an estimated 3,000 food items, with an approximate value of £7,000, to Bordon Food Bank. Our Good Grub Club, created to combat food poverty, went online too, with the number of people taking place doubling. And we set up our Buddy Club, a welfare initiative connecting our vulnerable, isolated customers with colleagues through weekly phone calls.
Goal 3: Good health and well-being
Providing safe, secure, and nurturing environments facilitates physical and mental wellbeing, during the pandemic we continued to support our customers and communities, supporting local hubs to distribute supplies, food and more.
Abri aspires to deliver a social value ratio of £1:£12:50 for health and well-being across our community investment areas, we are ambitious, but we know we can get there.
This year, we achieved £1: £5.74. We have a way to go, but we’re ambitious and know we canget there.
Goal 8: Decent work and economic growth
When the pandemic struck, we closed offices and focused on virtual collaboration, providing colleagues with home working tools and kit in order to ensure their wellbeing, and to support homeworking. Abri appointed a PPE manager to ensure the highest safety standards for our front-line staff.
We have trained mental health first aiders, known as Wellbeing Ambassadors, to support colleagues throughout the pandemic and beyond, and we offer online HITT, physical training and yoga classes covering practical nutrition, meditation, and mindfulness in order to support our colleagues wellbeing.
Within six weeks of the first national lockdown our employment support services were moved online, giving people the confidence and support to find a job, whilst also achieving an 20% higher retention rate on our digital courses.
Goal 10: Reduced inequalities
We are committed to ensuring that everyone has a voice, whether that’s in our homes, communities, or workplaces.
Abri has implemented a scrutiny function appointing 16 residents reflecting the communities Abri works on behalf of, we have also recruited more than 100 people to our scrutiny sounding Board, ensuring our residents can get involved with our work on a more flexible basis.
We have included an Equality Diversity and Inclusion Committee (EDI) within our governance structure and to ensure EDI is embedded within our culture.
Goal 11: Sustainable cities and communities
In order to ensure everyone has a safe, warm, and sustainable home, we much must increase the supply of new housing, Abri will build at least 12,500 homes by 2030, working with government and other organisations that share our values to significantly exceed this. We will be innovative in our delivery, maximising the number of off-site manufactured homes in order to minimise our carbon footprint whilst delivering a wide range of housing options in response to the housing crises.
Abri will invest £436m in existing homes over the next decade, setting higher standards, investing in technology and prioritising regeneration, in order to ensure that we create great homes and sustainable communities, where people want to live.
Goal 12: Responsible consumption and production
Abri seeks to ensure that the substantial amount of goods and services we provide are from responsible sources and that all waste generated is also dealt with responsibly, Abri actively seeks to work with likeminded suppliers that can support us to reduce our environmental impact and carbon footprint though our procurement processes.
We are developing a new Environment and Climate strategy that will set out more ambitious environmental targets and support us to reduce our carbon footprint in line with science-based targets.
Goal 13: Climate action
We have developed our retrofit roadmap which sets out how we will decarbonise our homes and ensure that we eradicate fuel poverty within our communities, all of our homes will be a minimum of EPC Band C by 2030, and net zero carbon by 2050.
Abri recognises the need to take a holistic approach to sustainability and is committed to driving a low carbon culture throughout the organisation, we have launched our Carbon Academy which will provide all colleagues with Carbon Literacy training during a two-year period.
The ‘Abri Way’ provides a framework for colleagues to work in a flexible and agile way, underpinned by our wellbeing strategy, this supports colleagues to reduce carbon impacts whilst working in a more efficient way.
Goal 15: Life on land
Abri is committed to minimising the impact that our homes and our business has on the environment. As a founding member of the Greener Futures Partnership we our collaborating with others in order to identify and promote solutions for sustainable housing, driving enhanced quality and greater social value from the decarbonisation agenda. This will be achieved through sharing best practice, conducting key research in order to address some of the major questions the social housing sector has in relation to transitioning to a net zero economy, and creating new resources and guidance.