Peter Henry
Director of Sustainability
As part of wider business growth ambitions, taking an authentic approach to sustainability strategy is one thing, but actually integrating sustainability into commercially viable delivery is where the real importance lies.
Harworth Group plc is a leading regeneration, and strategic landowner and developer focused on the Industrial & Logistics (I&L) and Residential sectors. We pride ourselves on making a positive, lasting impact on our planet, our communities, and our people. Our purpose and expertise lie in the transformation of land and property into sustainable places where people want to live and work.
As a business we are in a relatively unique position, able to provide oversight of the whole development process, from planning through multi-phased delivery of infrastructure and buildings and beyond. This allows us to understand, influence and integrate both commercial and sustainability approaches for the long-term benefit of the developments we create.
Sustainability should add to the process, creating better places and spaces, rather than being seen as a hinderance or box to tick to allow corporate reporting. This is why our approach to sustainability is embedded within our wider business strategy, ensuring sustainability is recognised not as a separate workstream, but an integral part of delivering successful projects.
The Harworth Way is our framework for the integration of sustainability and social value into our business model and the developments we create. It ensures sustainability principles are embedded across our culture, strategy and, most importantly, our approach to delivering development from concept to occupation.
As a business with roots in the former industrial heartlands of the North and the Midlands, Harworth’s journey from Carbon to Net Zero Carbon (‘NZC’) is perhaps starker than most. However, this heritage gives us a unique insight into the scale of the task for us, our suppliers and our customers, in decarbonising our operations, whilst delivering large, complex long-term regeneration projects.
During my time at Harworth, well over a decade now, we have recycled and re-used millions of tonnes of materials across our sites, dealt with contamination from former industrial uses, delivered a range of energy strategies, worked with occupiers to reduce energy demand and created 1000s of acres of nature recovery. Most recently we have created our first two habitat banks and integrated bespoke rooftop solar packages into commercial, retail and education facilities.
Our NZC ambitions are fully aligned to those of our growth strategy, and we have implemented a range of workstreams and targets to ensure the two are fully integrated. This includes a bespoke emissions monitoring process, embedded in our construction contracts, which is fully aligned with existing industry standards, allowing us to react to emerging planning policies and industry based NZC definitions. As a result, all of our commercial buildings, delivered from 2022 onwards, have met specific embodied carbon and operational energy targets with rooftop solar included as standard.
Working closely with our supply chain the data we have gathered across 50+ construction contracts not only provides a unique insight into our embodied emissions from a reporting perspective, but also gives us the data to influence the design and construction of our future buildings whilst also sharing with our suppliers. This has not been an easy process, but if the industry and government can come together to align development level reporting, through standards like the NZC Building Standard, with corporate reporting through the ISSB, then the entire industry will benefit.
Above all our approach is to be authentic and take ownership. We recognise that strategy is one thing, but delivery is another. Our integrated approach to sustainability fully embraces this philosophy.