Gloucester City Homes (GCH) has launched its first electric van as part of its commitment to ‘going green’. The van which has the strapline ‘Driving to a greener future’ will be used as a trial with the aim of expanding the fleet in the very near future.
Steve Williams, Head of PropertyCare at GCH confirmed “Our vehicles are essential to the service we provide to our customers as we have a mobile repairs workforce that needs to respond quickly and efficiently. The new van marks GCH’s exciting first step in reducing the impact of day-to-day services and demonstrating our Environmental and Climate Change Vision agreed last Autumn.”
Michael Hill, Director of Assets at GCH commented “Every small step in our journey to our Vision makes a difference to our carbon footprint. We are doing more work to assess how we can limit our environmental impact and support our tenants including reducing energy consumption in our tenant’s homes, improving our waste management, reducing business travel and using less office space. Introducing more environmentally friendly based approaches are important steps towards reducing our carbon footprint.” He added “Part of the Vision focuses on raising our properties to Energy Performance Band C by 2035 as part of Government energy efficiency targets, so we are working hard to identify funding streams, use our borrowing and our rental income to achieve this target.”
Rob Panou, Head of Assets and Development at GCH added, “This is an exciting time for GCH. We have been focusing upon making our new homes more environmentally friendly and more energy efficient for residents. 68 new homes have been fitted with Switchee smart thermostats, which heat properties more efficiently by adjusting to occupancy patterns, building type and local weather and this on average saves 10% energy. Alongside this more environmentally friendly boilers with lower levels of nitrogen levels have been fitted.
New methods of construction are also being introduced in 7 of our new homes in Elmbridge where the ‘Passivhaus’ construction method is being used. This is an advanced low energy construction standard which uses high performance insulation to make buildings draft free to eliminate heat loss in order to create a building with very low environmental impact. The new homes will also have car charging ports and air source heat pumps. “