Protecting our Environment

Improving the sustainability of good housing stock through renovation is fundamental to our business model and ethos. Bringing valuable housing stock back into good repair extends the life of the building and facilitates its positive environmental contribution. Throughout the property refurbishment process, we work with our contractors to minimise the amount of waste by re-using materials, where feasible, and ensure that all construction works are carried out in line with local health and safety regulations

Consistent with our Sustainable Procurement Policy, we aim to use products and materials that have a low environmental impact, so long as their technical performance meets the required standards, and they are economically viable for refurbished properties.

Although the core of our business consists of upgrading older buildings, where we do develop new buildings, we operate to the highest environmental standards. We have recently purchased a site in Erkner, in the outskirts of Berlin, where we are developing 34 single family houses. Each unit will have an electric car charging point and triple glazing as standard, and heating will use a combination of hybrid solar collectors and brine/water heat pumps. These energy-saving measures have earned the asset a pro forma KfW 55 energy efficiency rating, one of the highest ratings that new-builds can receive. The energy-efficient nature of this development underpins the Company’s commitment to ensuring compliance with the highest efficiency standards for new-build acquisitions.

The greatest environmental impact from our property portfolio is from the utilities used by our tenants in their homes. As a landlord, we do not have direct control over most of the utility usage, as tenants are in control of the utility-consumption information within their own homes. However, where we can, we encourage our tenants to reduce their utility usage by providing them with helpful hints and advice, and we endeavour to ensure that a greater proportion of the electricity supplied to our buildings is from renewable sources.

To better manage tenants’ waste, we ensure that tenants are kept well informed about how to properly recycle their waste and we work with our waste providers on the disposal routes. Many of our properties have been awarded recycling awards.

Given the bulk of the day-to-day running of PSD’s operations is undertaken by our Property Advisor and PSD itself does not have offices, we encourage QSix to minimise its environmental impact. QSix’s Berlin and London offices are fitted with energy-saving products, and they have an Environment Champion for each office to encourage employees to reduce their utility usage, improve recycling and reduce the amount of paper used. Employees at the London and Berlin offices receive ESG training every two years.

To the extent that the majority of our tenants have direct contact themselves with the electricity providers, we do not have direct control over the majority of the utility usage in our properties. Although our visibility and oversight are therefore limited, we have continued to strengthen our ESG monitoring and reporting in 2022 in line with EPRA’s SBPR framework.

In addition to measuring the buildings that use oil and district heating energy, in 2022, we have added to this more of our buildings using gas heating. This has increased the percentage of our Portfolio that is measurable from 25% in 2020 to over 90% currently. Given QSix is a separate legal entity, its office impact is not included within our EPRA ESG reporting. For more details on our ESG performance, see our EPRA SBPR Reports published in 2021 and 2022.