PictonProperty Income Limited Sustainability Report 2021
17
Approach
Introduction
Environmental Focus
Sustainable Buildings
Our Employees
Stakeholder Engagement
Appendix
Approach Our sustainability approach in action continued Sustainable thinking, collaborative action. Working with the Better Buildings Partnership to launch a comprehensive practical guide to best practice in responsible property management.
-14% Reduction in service charge costs
Our Head of Occupier Services was invited to join the Occupier Engagement Working Party and contribute towards the creation of a new Responsible Property Management Toolkit for asset, property and facility managers. This group was tasked with considering and drafting guidance notes on topics such as occupier engagement, assessing occupier requirements, building user guides and service charge requirements. With experience in dealing with service charges and a former role as a member of the RICS Service Charge Working Party, our Head of Occupier Services contributed to writing the service charge guidance note covering best practice service charge procedures and how to take sustainability matters into account when dealing with all aspects of service charges. We have 31 service charges in our portfolio with a total annual budget of around £6.1 million. We are very aware that our occupiers expect us to manage their payments prudently and ensure services are delivered properly in order to fully support their businesses and employees. The pandemic has increased the focus on value for money and we are pleased that through careful management we were able to reduce service charge costs in 2020 by up to -14% at some locations without impacting on service standards or building operations. This was achieved in part through our commitment to undertake a selection of ESG audits across several of our properties. The audits identified a range of cost saving measures mainly related to changes in the operation of mechanical
and electrical plants. The payback period was almost immediate and we estimate initial annual savings of around £60,000. Further ESG audits will be undertaken in 2021, focusing on buildings where we believe the most impact can be made. We believe service charges are an important driver of sustainability focused improvements, working in collaboration with our occupiers. For example, we are looking to improve the accuracy of electricity metering at some locations including Queens House, Glasgow, which will enable occupiers to better understand how they can improve energy efficiency. We have seen growing interest in the installation of electric car charging facilities. We have been discussing how to use service charges to support this with occupiers at several sites including Tower Wharf, Bristol, Colchester Business Park, Colchester and Atlas House, Marlow. Our growing biodiversity programme has also been a topic of much occupier interest and the roll out of beehives, bug hotels, bird boxes and other measures has been well received at locations such as Queens House, Glasgow, Colchester Business Park, Pembroke Court, Chatham and Parkbury Industrial Estate, Radlett.
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