News

The publication of the 7th edition of RITTERWALD Sustainable Housing Outlook was presented at the annual conference of the European Federation for Living (EFL) in Paris in May 2025.

This special edition addresses the quality of ESG data against the Sustainability Reporting Standard for Social Housing in the UK (SRS), measured by the RITTERWALD External Assessment.

In 2020 RITTERWALD contributed to the development of the SRS. Since then, RITTERWALD is formally an endorser and -critical- ambassador. We are concerned that the adopters of the SRS are overhauled by the financial service industry if adopters do not align better and faster with the evolving non-financial reporting requirements. This is relevant for access to sustainable finance either through bank loans, bond issuances and joint ventures with responsible equity capital. In other words, it affects the much-needed recapitalization of UK housing associations. High quality externally verified data are key. And that is what the SRS is all about. As critical ambassador we have opened the debate about the necessity of data assurance by introducing our external assessment of the SRS.

To find out about the quality of the ESG reports, we conducted an external assessment of 50% of the housing association adopter community (60 adopters). We ranked 14 criteria on a scale from 1 (insufficient) to 4 (great). We concluded that the overall performance is sufficient (2). The performance of the environmental dimension scores just good (3), followed by sufficient scores (2) for the social and governance dimensions. Best performing criterion is EPC rating (for existing and new stock), in accordance with the outcome of SRS’s latest annual review. Worst performing criteria are ESG risks and professional development. There are noticeable improvement potentials for reporting on actions as outcome of tenant satisfaction. It seems that after 4 years of reporting against the SRS, the adopters have set a solid baseline, but now it is time to start enhancing.