Sustainable Development

The sustainability of homebuilding is now a political priority in the UK. The UK Government aims to progress to zero carbon for new build homes, and this will result in both a substantial challenge and substantial change for the homebuilding industry.

Urban regeneration is a significant part of Taylor Wimpey's business. Through redevelopment of brownfield (previously developed) land we have a positive impact on the local environment by cleaning up contaminated sites and returning the land to productive use. Taylor Wimpey supports the use of sustainable remediation technologies to clean up and make safe soils and groundwater contaminated from past industrial land uses.

We have taken the positive approach of including affordable housing in the vast majority of our current and future schemes; thereby creating mixed and balanced communities. Our strategy is to work with local authorities in identifying the most appropriate type of dwelling mix and a range of affordability levels, and creating quality homes that will receive Government financial support in the form of Social Housing Grants.

The EcoHomes scheme is an environmental assessment method for house building and refurbishment and considers a range of issues that include energy efficiency, construction materials used and location-related issues such as local transport links. Ratings given are “Pass”, “Good”, “Very Good” or “Excellent”. We have built to EcoHomes standards on a number of schemes, e.g. Greenwich Millennium Village has achieved “Excellent” as has the Green Building, Manchester. EcoHomes is to be superseded by a new assessment system, the Code for Sustainable Homes.