Our focus on transparency and reporting
We are committed to transparent reporting and communicating our progress to all of our stakeholders. We have been awarded EPRA Gold for both our 2023 Annual Report and sustainability reporting. We have been reporting to GRESB since 2017 and in 2023, we maintained our GRESB three Green star status, scoring ahead or inline with the GRESB average in each of the Environmental, Social and Governance categories.
The European Public Real Estate Association’s (EPRA) mission is to promote, develop and represent the European public real estate sector.
EPRA provides effective and continuous leadership in matters of common interest by publishing research and encouraging discussion of issues impacting the property industry, both within the membership and with a wide range of stakeholders, including the EU institutions, governmental and regulator bodies and business partners.
We support EPRA’s drive to bring parity to the comparability and quality of information provided to investors and other key stakeholders. With this in mind, we aim to allow our audience to navigate to key areas of narrative in our reporting and highlight these areas within our Reports to aid identification.
We also include all of our key EPRA performance metrics in one section within our reporting as well as highlighting other specific metrics throughout our Reports.
EPRA performance measures (EPM)
EPRA Best Practices Recommendations recognise the key performance measures detailed below, something we fully support. We aim to be as transparent with our EPRA Best Practices Recommendation reporting as possible, and we felt the inclusion of the purpose against each measure would be helpful for our audiences and help give context. We have also cross referenced these specific measures to more detailed information found in our Annual Reports.
EPRA performance measures
| 2024 | 2023 | 2022 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| EPRA earnings | £21.7m | £21.3m | £21.2m |
| EPRA earnings per share | 4.0p | 3.9p | 3.9p |
| EPRA NTA | 96p | 100p | 120p |
| EPRA NDV | 101p | 105p | 119p |
| EPRA NRV | 105p | 110p | 131p |
| EPRA LTV | 28.2% | 27.0% | 21.3% |
| EPRA cost ratio (including direct vacancy costs) | 32.4% | 29.9% | 26.0% |
| EPRA cost ratio (excluding direct vacancy costs) | 23.0% | 21.3% | 19.9% |
| EPRA net initial yield | 5.4% | 5.0% | 4.1% |
| EPRA ‘topped-up’ net initial yield | 5.9% | 5.5% | 4.8% |
| EPRA vacancy rate | 9.2% | 9.5% | 7.2% |
EPRA earnings:
A key measure of a company’s underlying operating results and an indication of the extent to which current dividend payments are supported by earnings.
EPRA NTA per share:
The EPRA net tangible assets calculation assumes entities buy and sell assets, thereby crystallising certain levels of deferred tax liability.
EPRA NDV per share:
The EPRA net disposal value shows the impact to shareholder value if company assets are sold and/or liabilities are not held until maturity.
EPRA NRV per share:
The EPRA net reinstatement value measure highlights the value of net assets on a long-term basis. Assets and liabilities that are not expected to crystallise in normal circumstances such as the fair value of financial derivatives and deferred taxes on property valuation surpluses are therefore excluded. Since the aim of the metric is to also reflect what would be needed to recreate the Company through the investment market based on its current capital and financing structure, related costs such as real estate transfer taxes should be included.
EPRA net initial yield and ‘topped up’ net initial yield:
A comparable measure for portfolio valuations. This measure should make it easier for investors to judge for themselves, how the valuation of a portfolio compares with others. The EPRA NIY is based on the passing rents at the balance sheet date, the EPRA ‘topped up’ NIY also includes rents where there are unexpired lease incentives at the balance sheet date.
EPRA vacancy rate:
A 'pure' (%) measure of investment property space that is vacant, based on ERV.
EPRA cost ratios:
A ratio to enable meaningful measurement of the changes in a company’s operating costs as a percentage of rental income.
EPRA LTV:
Debt divided by market value of the property.
We regularly evaluate the sustainability issues important to us and our stakeholders and have fully integrated sustainability into our corporate strategy.
We have developed our sustainability framework to effectively track and measure our sustainability performance across our portfolio.
To increase our transparency, we started reporting to GRESB in 2017. We used our first year to benchmark where we were in the market and to establish the appropriate strategy for improvement.
Since then, we have put several initiatives in place to improve our score, including data collection, policy documentation and data accuracy and third party assurance.
For 2020, GRESB introduced a new scoring methodology, making comparison with previous years more difficult but we continue to identify areas where we can improve our score in the future and in 2022 we were awarded three Green star status.
The European Public Real Estate Association (‘EPRA’), is a non-profit association representing Europe’s publicly listed property companies. Through responding to EPRA, we are promoting sustainability within our property life cycle, while also identifying opportunities for further improvements relating to sustainability regulations and initiatives.
We report our overall energy, greenhouse gas, water and waste usage by sector. In the EPRA Disclosures section of our Sustainability Reports we have disclosed the absolute and intensity performance measures as set out by the EPRA Sustainability Best Practice Recommendations, and we have also provided further commentary in that section around the measures and the results for the year. We also collect tenant consumption data to increase the scope of our reporting and allow us to report whole building consumption.
These steps allow the Group to identify and target key impact areas across the portfolio, contributing to better management of the overall environmental performance and to formulate indicator targets to track sustainability performance.
The following measures are set out in the EPRA Disclosures sections of our Sustainability Reports:
Issue Type | Sustainability Performance Measure |
Energy | Total electricity consumption |
Like-for-like total electricity consumption | |
Total fuel consumption | |
Like-for-like total fuel consumption | |
Building energy intensity | |
Greenhouse gas emissions | Total direct GHG emissions |
Total indirect GHG emissions | |
Like-for-like total direct GHG emissions | |
Like-for-like total indirect GHG emissions | |
GHG intensity from building energy | |
Water | Total water consumption |
Like-for-like total water consumption | |
Building water intensity | |
Waste | Total weight of waste by disposal route |
Like-for-like total weight of waste by disposal route | |
Business travel | Total business travel emissions |