16 December 2022

Property Week’s Year in Review – Victoria Towers talks ESG

Partner and Co-Head of Industrial and Logistics, Victoria Towers, has contributed to Property Week’s ‘Year in Review’ – a look back on the key legal issues in property over the last year.

“Planning, ESG, the workplace, skills, cladding and building safety were all on the property agenda in 2022”, with Towers offering her insight into how environmental, social and governance (ESG) considerations – and in particular the ‘environmental’ – have risen to greater prominence this year.

Towers says: “Overall, 2022 has seen a more sophisticated approach to analysing the metrics of ESG compliance emerge, certainly from the sustainability side, and no doubt we will see growth from the social value angle over the coming months.

“It is also refreshing to see attention being given to what achieving net zero actually means, with a hard stance being taken in relation to offsetting and what actually counts.”

She says developers have also begun to adopt more widespread ESG credentials in their buildings, even without these being imposed by the government. “The voluntary uptake of [energy efficiency rating system] NABERS has become more widespread, which is hopefully a sign of things to come.”

This article was first published on 16 December 2022 in Property Week and can be read in full here.

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