Steps leading contractor is taking to help clients go green
Posted by guest author on Wed, Jan 25, 2012
Sustainability covers a wide variety of issues. Sustainable Homes manages an award winning best practice programme called the Sustainable Homes Index For Tomorrow (SHIFT) for housing providers and their supply chains. We have a number of leading organizations as corporate partners to this initiative. Our corporate partners are assisting to drive forward the sustainability agenda in a number of ways. Here Mears provides their initiatives to help their clients go green.
Mears is the UK’s largest provider of social housing maintenance and domiciliary care services. Every year we repair and maintain over 500,000 social homes and provide home care to over 20,000 people. We also run 18 Home Improvement Agencies which give advice and support to older private home owners.
SHIFT allows us to actively engage a range of policy makers and housing professionals on issues that have a significant impact on people’s lives. Our work puts us in contact with some of the most marginalised people within the UK. Being part of the SHIFT network allows us to be at the forefront of advances which can make a positive impact on the lives of tenants and wider communities such as initiatives to tackle fuel poverty.
Mears’ Record of Achievement
Mears is qualified to manage, install and maintain a wide range of energy-efficiency and micro-
generation systems and products. Beyond this we have a long-standing commitment to promoting environmental sustainability.
In 2011 Mears:
- Worked with clients from Glasgow to Brighton to retrofit existing housing stock, and appraise and install new green technology
- Mears project managed the internal fit out on behalf of British Gas of their " Information Hub" a part of the prestigious Victorian Terrace refurbishment at the BRE Innovation Park
- Was part of the team that received the 2011 Sustainable Housing Award for the Sustainable Larger Housing Retrofit Project of the Year
- Provided strategic support to asset management professionals on their carbon reduction programmes.
The Year Ahead
The Green Deal is going to bring many challenges and opportunities. Mears is already working with our Local Authority and Housing Association clients to maximise the benefits to the social housing sector. Mears is helping clients:
- Develop their Environmental Strategies and Action Plans
- Determine strategies for treating off-gas-grid properties
- Appraise the best ways to leverage funding and subsidies
- Develop a range of practical solutions to improve asset management information via more efficient stock condition surveying
- Build capacity by providing energy awareness training
It is only by working in partnership with Local Authorities, Housing Associations and tenants that we will be able to find an energy solution for every home.
Mears is a Corporate Partner of the award winning SHIFT programme. For more information on SHIFT please see here.
Article written by Ray Blundell, Mears Group
