Environment

There are around 28 million homes in the UK and many of those will need changes to make them more energy efficient known as retrofitting. These changes to our homes are a key factor for the UK to be able to achieve its net zero commitment.  We want to engage our customers to provide home energy information, connections to trusted installers, and financial products that may help with costs – including cashback incentives for customers who borrow money to make green home improvements.

Our Greener homes Hub helps our customers to understand what action they may be able to take and what solutions our partners offer. This is our first step in helping our customers to make their homes more energy efficient and we have more exciting initiatives planned.

Greener homes

We understand the importance of providing sustainable finance options to support a secure and inclusive transition to a more sustainable economy. We offer Green and Social loans and Sustainability Linked Lending (SLL) loans.

In 2023 , we continued to support business customers’ sustainability journeys with our sustainable finance proposition, and we raised and facilitated over £659m.

Sustainable banking

Social housing helps those on low incomes and some of the more vulnerable people in society gain access to a home.

In 2023, we provided an additional £0.8 billion of new lending taking the current total sector funding to c.£8 billion. Of this, £355 million is sustainability linked to ESG performance targets.

Lending to the sector has a significant social impact in the UK. We want to help fund affordable homes and upgrade existing social housing stock to improve energy efficiency.

Sustainable banking

In 2023, we moved to our new head office, Unity Place in Milton Keynes. The mixed-use building hosts between 4,500-5,000 people.

Sustainability has been a key point throughout design and construction.

• Excellent rating from The Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method (BREEAM).
• 3-star Fitwell accreditation highlighting our commitment to providing a supportive and healthy work environment for our employees.

Sustainability measures at the site include rainwater harvesting, 400 photovoltaic panels, and using air source heat pumps for heating, which avoids the use of natural gas. There is parking for 434 bicycles and 13 charging points for electric vehicles.

Sustainability at Unity Place

We work closely with our suppliers to reduce the negative environmental impact of our operations and strive towards positive social impact. One method of supporting this is to ask our suppliers to register with EcoVadis, an ESG assessment tool, to help us identify strengths and weaknesses in our supply chain relating to the environment, labour and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement.

In 2023, our focus on reducing Scope 3 emissions from our supply chain was formally recognised by: 

• World Green award for responsible procurement
• Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply award for a Scope 3 community insight project in partnership with Deloitte and Pearson.

Code of Supplier Responsibility 2024 (santander.co.uk)