Environmental, Social & Governance
Our ESG Statement, and our progress so far.
We predominantly work in the social housing sector because our team believes passionately that everyone deserves to live in quality homes in great communities. Delivering social value is really important to us and we are always keen to focus on this.
As a trusted UK consultancy, we recognise our duty to operate sustainably, support our people and communities, and uphold the highest ethical standards.
Our mission is to support the affordable housing sector to achieve its goals and deliver the high quality homes and services that residents deserve.
Since our inception in 1990, we have always shared the values of the social housing sector. We are passionate about partnering with organisations in the sector to enable them to be high performing and resident-focused because we know this leads to improved homes, stronger communities and, ultimately, better lives.
To do this, we need to ensure we lead by example by reducing our impact on the environment and helping to tackle climate change, delivering meaningful social value and ensuring our business governance meets the highest standards.
Key Priorities
| To reduce our carbon footprint and emissions. | To ensure we promote equality, diversity and inclusion. | To run our business through ethical governance. | To deliver social value. |
| To reduce our carbon footprint and emissions. |
| To ensure we promote equality, diversity and inclusion. |
| To run our business through ethical governance. |
| To deliver social value. |
Our ESG Pillars and Objectives
Environmental Commitments
• Achieve carbon neutrality by 2035.
• Wherever possible, undertake sustainable travel and procurement.
• Sustainability considered throughout all of our operations.
• Support our clients in their efforts to decarbonise.
Social Commitments:
• Foster a diverse, inclusive and supportive workplace.
• Support employee wellbeing and development.
• Support community initiatives aligned with our values.
• Support our clients with social value initiatives and impact reporting.
Governance Commitments:
• Maintain strong ethical standards, both externally with clients and internally in our
business decisions.
• Integrate ESG into decision-making and business strategy.
• Communicate clearly, reporting regularly and transparently on progress with our ESG
commitments.
• Implement more stakeholder engagement to help shape and lead the business effectively.
Governance and Accountability
ESG Lead: Ruth Brown, Business Services Director
Board Sponsor: Jerry Gilbert, Executive Director
To demonstrate progress with our commitments, the ESG Lead will report to the Board annually and
ensure the ARK Annual Review includes an ESG section.
Implementation Roadmap
2026 – 2029
• Continue the work of the Decarbonisation Group and create action plan to reduce Scope 1 and 2
emissions, promote low carbon travel choices and sustainable procurement.
• Promote ESG awareness campaign internally.
• Measure the social value of our activities as a baseline.
• Use results from Staff Engagement Surveys and identify potential areas for improvement.
• Continue to incorporate ESG reporting into our annual review.
• Continue to deliver on People Strategy Action Plan.
• Conduct Stakeholder Engagement.
• Deepen partnerships with community organisations through volunteering and more charitable
fundraising.
• Regularly review our suite of socially aware policies such as Whistleblowing, Anti-Bribery, AI
/Data Ethics etc.
• Grow the number of projects we deliver which align with our ESG pillars such as supporting
clients with decarbonisation and social value projects.
• Conduct employee engagement surveys every 2 years.
2030+
• Achieve Net Zero – ensuring Scope 3 emissions have been achieved.
• Increase the diversity of our leadership and wider team.
Our progress so far:
Environmental
- The ARK Decarbonisation Working Group ensures our carbon footprint is monitored and proactively reduced. Monitoring is undertaken by an independent and respected organisation, the Energy Savings Trust who collate our bi-annual submitted data to audit and formulate a robust carbon insight report that our Board monitors helping us to drive positive change across the business. We have a Carbon Emissions Reduction Plan.
- ARK’s Scope 1 (direct) and Scope 2 (indirect) emissions are low, with the primary focus for improvement being Scope 3, particularly in the ‘business travel’ category. We aim to minimise this where possible, aligning with our commitment to reducing car use.
- We have introduced the Electric Car Scheme which enables our employees to lease electric cars via salary sacrifice. Currently, 6 employees lease 8 cars.
- We recycle all office waste.
- We are a founder member of Unlock Net Zero: a platform which supports the social housing sector to decarbonise and retrofit properties with measures which reduce reliance on fossil fuels and provide warm and efficient homes for residents.
- We support many clients to decarbonise. Recent projects include:
- Retrofit assessments for Bromford, Taff, Lench’s Trust, and Shropshire Towns and Rural Housing;
- Undertaking EPC data collection for Rugby Borough Council,
- Project managing WATMOS’s award-winning insulation initiative for 21 tower blocks, utilising the Social Housing Decarbonization Fund (SHDF) monies.
- Tenant engagement work for Birmingham City Council as part of their SHDF funding to install retrofit measure to people’s homes.
Social
- We recognise our people are the heart of our business. We have put in place a People Strategy which aims to attract, recruit and retain the best talent.
- We employ a diverse workforce and seek to reflect the communities in which we work. We are a Disability Confident organisation.
- We continuously seek to engage with employees and gain their feedback. We recently completed a Staff Survey (July 2025) and achieved a NPS of 62.5 which is excellent.
- We offer a competitive employee remuneration and benefits package which supports employee wellbeing and development. All staff take part in training opportunities and we encourage them to learn and grow in their roles with many undertaking qualifications and gaining accreditations with professional bodies such as CIH, RICS, CIPS etc.
- ARK is managing agent for CHIC (Communities and Housing Investment Consortium) and in this role was instrumental in establishing a new charity, CHIP, which we now promote and manage. CHIC makes annual contributions to CHIP and the team organises and participates in regular fundraising events. CHIC directly promotes social value through its supported contracts and CHIP funds support for a range of local projects and employability schemes in our sector. CHIC has (ARK) staff dedicated to promoting social value
- We have supported many charitable causes and voluntary organisations. Each year we organise our ARK Amble – a virtual walking challenge which in the last 5 years has raised £8,630 for Crisis, Shelter Cymru, Trussell Trust, St Basils and the Ootsider. We sponsor an annual CHIP Award in memory of our much-missed colleague Ian Winslet. The Award is for Mentor of the Year.
- We are a leading provider of assistance on social investment and social enterprise. ARK has experience in measuring the impact and social return on investment of training and intervention activity using the HACT methodology. For example, our work with Black Country Talent Match and Liverpool City Region Talent Match Plus where we assessed the outcomes in relation to skills, employment, life circumstances and future prospects;
- We support local – our team will support local businesses wherever they are working to give back to the local economy, wherever possible. For example we use a social enterprise called Jericho who provide our cleaning services, and they work exclusively with disadvantaged people;
Governance
- We were founded in 1990, and the strong ethical principles that we started with are still true today. We share the values of the social housing sector and this is reflected in our mission and values which guide our decisions as a business and how we work with our clients many of which we have supported for decades.
- We produce an annual review each year and this reports our progress with our ESG commitments.
- We are led by a skilled and experienced Board and wider senior leadership team. ESG plays a key role in our strategic decisions such as the future of the business and the services we offer to clients.