Our Approach

In 2019, we reviewed our material risks with the support of an external consultant in line with best-practice guidance. 

The process started with a horizon scanning exercise to establish relevant trends, review the legislative environment and consider priorities for the industry. This resulted in the creation of a long list of more than 200 themes, which were then condensed into a short list of 23 issues considered to be most relevant to a London-based property investment and development company. 

We consulted with a number of internal stakeholders representing all areas of the business, who ranked the issues in terms of impact on our business. In order to understand the importance of the issues to external stakeholders, we also invited a number of investors, occupiers, service partners and community organisations to participate.

Our finalised matrix was signed off by our Board of Directors. The top material themes for GPE were identified as:

• Sustainable Building Design
• Health and Safety
• Wellbeing
• Climate Change Mitigation and Energy Efficiency
• Climate Adaptation and Resilience
• Environmental Compliance
• Enhancement of the Public Realm
• Biodiversity and Urban Greening
• Air Quality
• Smart Buildings and Digitisation
• Community Engagement
• Transparency

Our business risks were updated to reflect the outcome of our review. See our business risks here.

As part of our review of material risks we mapped the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals against our strategy to consider how our sustainability priorities relate to those of the wider world. Whilst we were able to relate our activities to all of the goals, the four which had the most resonance and aligned most closely with our purpose and values were:

	We are committed to ensuring that our buildings are designed and managed to support the mental health and wellbeing of our employees, customers and our local communities. Air quality is significant issue for London and for ensuring health and wellbeing. We have a clear strategy for considering outdoor and indoor air quality within our Brief for Creating Sustainable Spaces, Wellbeing Brief and Social Impact Strategy.
	We are focused on improving the design of our new and existing buildings to improve energy efficiency and continue to drive carbon emissions down. Through the adoption of renewable and low carbon technologies we are improving energy efficiency and making our buildings more sustainable.
	We are focussed on ensuring a lasting positive impact for the communities in which we are working to help our customers and communities thrive.
	It is estimated that the built environment contributes 40% of the UK's carbon emissions. We recognise we have a role to play and are committed to reducing our impact setting long-term targets to address both climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Following the review of material risks we:

• Set new targets on energy efficiency and climate change mitigation; and
• Undertook climate risk modelling to understand our resilience to climate change.

In 2020, we expanded on this, creating our Statement of Intent “The Time is Now”, based on four pillars, informed by our materiality review, this sets out our long term strategy for sustainability, including the decarbonisation of our business by 2030. In 2023 we updated our Statement of Intent and in 2024 updated Our Roadmap to Net Zero committing to reduce our Scope 1,2 and 3 emissions by 90% before offsetting to net zero by 2040.

For the industry to make progress on sustainability issues collaboration is key. We are therefore members of the UK Green Building Council, Better Buildings Partnership, and Wild West End. Our Sustainability & Social Impact Director is Chair of the Better Buildings Partnership and a member of the EPRA Sustainability Committee and sits on the British Property Federation Sustainability Committee.

Through our membership of a number of business improvement districts and London First, we are also working with our communities to drive sustainability improvements across London.