Assessing Our Sustainability Success
The Berkeley Group uses four measures to communicate its sustainability performance to the investment community and other stakeholders. These measures, described below, provide robust industry-wide frameworks for understanding sustainability, identifying what is accepted as being good business practice generally, and best practice in house building specifically.
FTSE4Good
FTSE4Good is a FTSE Index designed to allow investors to identify and invest in companies that have globally recognised corporate responsibility standards. This Index is an 'in-or-out' Index rather than a 'best in class'. If a company can demonstrate that it has met the minimum criteria then they will be included. Berkeley has been listed in FTSE4Good for seven years.
The Queen's Award for Enterprise: Sustainable Development
The Queen's Award recognises companies which have made outstanding advances in performance or have a high level of continuous achievement. In April 2008, The Berkeley Group was recognised in the Sustainable Development category for strong leadership, promoting best practice in our sector and embedding sustainability through our entire business operations.
The Carbon Disclosure Project
The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) encourages organisations to measure, manage and reduce their carbon emissions. We participate in the project by voluntarily disclosing information about our own processes and progress. The results are published in twenty countries around the world.
Companies are scored using two metrics: a Carbon Performance score and a Carbon Disclosure score. The Carbon Performance score recognises companies taking positive action to mitigate their impact, manage the risks and seize the opportunities presented by climate change. The Carbon Disclosure score assesses companies on the quality and completeness of their disclosures. In the 2011 CDP, Berkeley achieved a 'Disclosure score' of 79, higher than that of all other UK FTSE350 homebuilders. Our 'Performance score' of 'C' indicated that our performance is comparable with our peers. We continue to try and improve our CDP ranking by improving our transparency and management practices.
The NextGeneration Benchmark
In November 2011, The Berkeley Group was ranked first in the NextGeneration benchmark of the top 25 UK homebuilders, for the sixth year running. Introduced in 2004, the benchmark assesses and ranks homebuilders on their sustainability strategy, policies and practices.
Our consistent performance at the top of this benchmark is strong recognition of our sector-leading sustainability strategy and performance.
We are also proud that our efforts to further sustainability within our business have been recognised through other industry awards. For more information about these, please click here.
