At SHIFT, we are committed to keeping the SHIFT environmental standard up-to-date. This means considering continual improvements in line with national policy updates and feedback we receive from SHIFT landlords. Annual feedback is vital to ensure we are capturing the detail that is important to landlords.
In line with this, we have just kickstarted our SHIFT 2022 consultation by sending our consultation document out to our key contacts at each organisation. This highlights 3 areas of improvement that we are consulting on, alongside a list of pros and cons. We then ask for your stance on this area, your preferred approach from 2 options, and any other feedback for each. For more detail on these updates, please see the consultation document[1].
We also welcome any other feedback, ideas or comments as part of this consultation that are not related to the 3 updates we are consulting on this year. We consider these alongside some other general improvements to SHIFT that we are not consulting on. For the 2022 assessment, this includes:
- a change to the SHIFT portal to further align with ESG reporting
- updated long term science-based targets to align with Government legislation and strategies
- updated excel tools and guidance within the portal for easier use and clearer advice
We do a lot of testing and detailed analysis to ensure that any updates will not affect your SHIFT accreditation, provided your environmental performance stays the same. Our aim is that despite these updates, if your environmental performance remains the same, then your SHIFT accreditation remains the same, so that none of these updates will negatively impact SHIFT scores.
Last year, our consultation exercise led to the creation of additional ‘environmental’ ESG and SECR questions within the SHIFT assessment. This has enabled us to provide audited ESG and SECR outputs alongside SHIFT to target more of your reporting needs. We have received good feedback from this and are pleased to see so many of our metrics in our SHIFT landlords’ ESG reporting.
Annual consultation provides an opportunity for our landlords to suggest any updates they might like to see in future assessments. Each recommendation is carefully considered and will be taken onboard, if not straight away then it is definitely something we will continue to raise in the future and possibly implement in future assessments. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and feedback.
[1] If you haven’t already and you would like to receive a copy of the consultation document, or for more information, please get in touch with [email protected]
Please get all responses sent to Izzy by 30th November 2021 to allow enough time to get these changes implemented before the start of SHIFT 2022. Decisions will be made by a simple majority.