A Stafford housing association has signed a new ‘green pledge’ to customers

Stafford and Rural Homes has promised to put greener living at the top of its agenda for 2012/13 with a number of improvements to help both customers and the environment.

At its Annual General Meeting, on September 20, SARH and its partners outlined some of the work that will go ahead over the next year while taking the time to highlight some of its major achievements so far.

“This year we have helped both our customers and the environment by spending £7m on improvements to homes,” said Karen Armitage, Chief Executive of SARH.

“We have fitted solar panels to 228 homes and installed new central heating systems and loft insulation to a number of our properties, meaning our customers are now benefitting from lower fuel bills.

“We want to continue that work in 2012/13 by installing a further 450 new central heating systems and 839 loft insulations to help more people heat their homes.”

The event was attended by the Stafford MP Jeremy Lefroy, the Mayor and Mayoress of Stafford, Brian and Lily Cross, and over 90 SARH staff, board members, customers and partners including Stafford Borough Council, Barclays, Anthony Collins solicitors, Jewson, Heatex, DJG, LEX Autolease and Profile Communication.

The new ‘green offer’ to customers includes a list of measures including ‘green themed’ courses run through the successful Community Learning Programme, working with communities to develop new allotment spaces and earmarking 25 per cent of its annual Customer Initiative Bid budget to  fund ‘green projects’.

SARH will also remain committed to recycling and is actively promoting the ‘Love Food: Hate Waste’ scheme, which encourages customers to think more about what they need when shopping and not over-buying.

One of the housing provider’s greatest ‘green’ achievements so far is its first eco-home, which the Frazer-Ellis family moved into in May this year.

The three bedroom detached property includes a number of energy saving and environmentally friendly features including high levels of insulation, water saving devices and kitchen units made from recycled timber products.

“It was a great moment when we handed over the keys to our new eco-home and we hope we can learn a lot from this project to make all our homes more eco-friendly. 

”We have been working closely with the family living in the eco-home to find out what works best and help them embrace their new, “greener” lifestyle.”