Spring 2022 Update To The SRS: What Has Changed?

The Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing was updated on the 25th May 2022 to version 1.2. This exciting change brought forward some clarifications and minor edits to the original SRS published in November 2020. But what exactly are these updates, and how will they affect your SRS Report?

What Changes Were Made To The SRS

If you need further clarification about what was in the first version of the SRS, please read our article here!

In this update, clarifications were made to the Governance section of the Standard. There were six changes made in total:

1. Include the percentage of homes without an EPC Rating in both existing and new homes.
2. The ideal response to: The Percentage Demographics section – will also include the number of women, BAME, people who have a disability and the age of the Housing Association’s residents.
3. When disclosing the percentage of workers paid the Real Living Wage, you will also have to disclose whether or not apprentices and contractors are included in this number.
4. The Gender Pay Gap has been changed to reflect the Median Gender Pay Gap.
5. The CEO-Worker Pay Ratio has also been changed to the CEO-Median Worker Pay Ratio.
6. The average number of sick days your worker takes has been expanded to include both short and long-term sick leave.

There were also further clarifications made to ensure reporting was consistent, such as date formatting. Another important clarification was made to the share and number of existing and then separately new homes allocated to: general needs (…) to specify that the number of existing and new homes include those owned and those that are managed.

How Will This Affect Your Reporting?

These new changes mean you will have to collect slightly more data than in version 1.0. You will also have to ensure your dates are formatted correctly, specifically in the format MM/YYYY (month/year).

Be sure to look over the report and the reasons for changes. Clarity is the key to success! You may also consider how you choose to format your SRS Report and choose to utilise a Reporting Software Tool. This is where Convene ESG can help you!

SRS Report One Year On

Alongside the updates to the SRS, the ESG Social Housing Work Group also published The Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing report on the first year of publications. In this report, they outlined concerns that Housing Associations were being selective with which Core Issues in the SRS they reported on. However, they but celebrated that almost all were able to report on over 30 criteria.

Two of the Housing Associations that were included in this report were Cartrefi Conwy and Orbit, who are two of our Convene ESG early adopters and used our solution to create their report!

How Can Convene ESG Help You With Your SRS Reporting?

Convene is a software provider already trusted by over 100 Housing Associations. Our new product, Convene ESG, has been recently updated to reflect the changes to the SRS and can streamline your SRS reporting from start-to-finish. All you need to do is input your relevant data and Convene ESG will create a Word document with all information correctly formatted.

If you would like to learn more, please do not hesitate to get in contact with us, or keep an eye on our LinkedIn page as we are offering regular free Convene ESG webinars to all Housing Associations.