With a strategy that is Building a Living Legacy, London-based developer Telford Homes has always taken a strong sustainable approach to its work, winning the accolade of Britain’s most sustainable housebuilder in 2020, topping a list of 25 benchmarked by the NextGeneration scheme.
This accolade fired Telford Homes’ ambition to create a sustainability report that took ‘it to the next level’. The key challenge for agency Luminous was to communicate Telford Homes’ deep technical knowledge in a way that was engaging for all audiences. Its solution was to adopt a digital first approach, which refreshed the content and structure while reducing the word count by 30 per cent.
Interactive and animated features were used to bring the story to life, while a distinctive illustrative style was adopted that made the user experience more visually striking. The report focuses on Telford Homes’ key priorities: living legacy, balanced resources, creative building solutions and smart business, with a separate section dedicated to each.
But it first lays out its approach with an illustration of its journey to achieve net zero carbon by 2030, which encompasses dates for short-term targets along the way, such as achieving science-based carbon targets by 2024 and reducing embodied carbon by 30 per cent by 2026.
A clearly highlighted button takes users who require further details to a more in-depth journey, which includes materiality reviews and targets for BREEAM ratings.
Each section on Telford Homes’ business priorities showcases its approach through a mix of narrative, case studies and key statistics and further demonstrates its sustainability credentials. For example, its living legacy approach is illustrated with a case study about a project in South Kilburn, London to create 235 affordable homes. The scheme created nine apprenticeships, used local suppliers to provide around one fifth of the goods and services needed and diverted 97 per cent of construction waste from landfill.
The report has been successfully received, with visits to the sustainability section of Telford Homes’ website up almost 19 per cent year-to-year while the number of unique page views has risen almost 17 per cent.
