Corporate and social responsibility at DCH

DCH sustainability and environment initiative

As our business grows, we strive to deliver excellent environmental practice in the development and maintenance of our homes.

Our work with our contractors and suppliers to improve environmental standards, our promotion of energy saving and recycling in our local communities and working with our customers to help everyone protect the environment.

In 2013 we were awarded a certification under British Standard EN ISO 14001 – the international standard for environmental management systems and our environmental systems are built on the principles of this standard, which we measure and report on.

We are part of the Advantage South West procurement consortium, which enables us to deliver excellent service in both cost effective procurement and knowledge sharing. Our ability to bulk purchase items and participate in Advantage South West has been hugely valuable in increasing our efficiency in caring for the environment.

In our communities we are providing great customer services to encourage our customers to be sustainable to help the environment and reduce their daily living costs.

Across the housing sector we are championing innovative ways of working so we can:

• comply with the environmental legislation and regulations applicable to its activities
• achieve high standards of environmental management in all areas of our work and activities
• seek to ensure that all those working on behalf of DCH comply with all relevant environmental legislation and regulations
• raise awareness and understanding of environmental matters across our company
• work to achieve sustainable solutions in our work
• measure and monitor our environmental objectives and targets.

Employee volunteering

As a not for profit organisation our focus is on putting our customers first, so we have a number of opportunities that our staff can ‘give back’ to the communities we work and live in.  We organise regular volunteering days with our schemes; transforming a store room into a therapy room or cleaning up a front garden area of a community building to allow community BBQs and outdoor activities to take place and to become a focal point for the community.

We support all employees who wish to give blood allowing them the time off to regularly donate.

Every year a charity is selected and we all work together to try and raise as much money as we possibly can; with employees baking scrumptious cakes, jumping out of planes and running a 100 mile race!