Methodologies for calculating a new set of environmental metrics relating to new build homes have been released. Issued by the Future Homes Hub [1], the methodologies are intended to bring consistency to environmental reporting across the housebuilding industry. They should help organisations check progress towards truly sustainable new homes, support regulatory and ESG commitments, and benchmark performance over time. For housebuilders, the practical challenge is turning these methodologies into reliable data, reporting processes and improvement plans. We think this is a great initiative because we are great believers in the adage, “you can only manage what you measure”.
Five core metrics
At the time of writing, there are five core metrics and methodologies for a further 18 metrics are due for publication in Q4 2026. The five core metrics should be pretty standard reporting by now:
- Average operational carbon intensity of completed homes
- Average internal water efficiency of completed homes
- Total and average project biodiversity net gain (BNG)
- Total emissions (Scope 1 & 2) (Future Homes Hub modification)
- Construction waste intensity
Extended metrics
The remaining 18 metrics do cover quite a lot of other sustainability features of new homes to one extent or another. Here are a few that we think all housebuilders would do well to look at:
- “Completed homes with means in place to compare predicted and actual energy consumption” – this is a nod to Post Occupancy Evaluation which is intended to close the so-called performance gap between design intent and what is actually built. We would suggest housebuilders actually carry out the comparison and extend this type of check to all other environmental features of the home. In our experience we have seen instances of poor in-use performance in water efficiency, EV chargers and cycle storage.
- “Completed homes built < 800m of a public transport node, accessible through active travel modes” – we would suggest housebuilders go further and install cycle storage space
- “Climate change adaptation policy and / or strategy” – as this becomes increasingly more important, we would urge housebuilders to go further and start compiling metrics, down to plot level, of resilience to overheating, flood and water stress.
- “Upfront embodied emissions (A1-A5, homes only)” – this is not really regulated anywhere else and so this is a highly important and useful metric to compile. We also know that openness about this kind of data can lead to real improvements in the supply chain. There are some fairly simple ways of evaluating this, and there are some very complicated ways! We suggest starting simply until the sector matures. The key for this is data, which we know is available within the housebuilder organisation from multiple sources.
- “Sustainable procurement policy and / or strategy” – ideally, we would like to see this enhanced with organisational level metrics that demonstrate how responsibly sourced materials are, right down to where they are extracted from the earth’s crust. In our environmental reporting work, we haven’t really seen anything truly useful, so we have developed what we call our “default” metric. Policies are a good start, but we sincerely hope that the supply chain sector will develop something more meaningful.
- Waste – construction waste is covered by the core metrics, but we would encourage housebuilders to install internal waste recycling bins as standard as evidence suggests this helps householders contribute to local authority recycling schemes.
How to do the reporting
The methodologies explain the key data and instructions necessary. Housebuilders may have their own internal teams to do this, but many will need support turning the requirements into practical reporting processes, robust data checks and clear outputs for regulators, investors and clients. An alternative is to use an external consultancy who does environmental reporting day-in day-out.
Another thing to consider is data organisation. Instead of scheme by scheme data being held in separate folders, drawing, pdf’s etc, we suggest housebuilders start creating databases with this information. This makes reporting quicker and reduces the risk of missing or inconsistent data. Not only will this help the housebuilder, but it will be particularly useful for social landlord clients. Specifically for CO2 reporting, here is a sketch of how housebuilders could organise their data.
As well as reporting the designed environmental performance, we urge housebuilders to evaluate the as-built performance. To allow easier implementation of this idea, we have developed an Environmental Quality Management System (EQMS) which is free to download from our resources page.
Next steps
Next steps are pretty straightforward:
- Take a look at the Future Homes Hub metrics and start organising data and reporting accordingly
- If you need further assistance with reporting against these metrics or organising the data behind them please be in touch for a free, no obligation call.