Insights from the analysis of sustainability reporting across UK real estate companies

Organisational sustainability reporting can act as a mechanism for the United Nations to track the progress of the Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs) and concomitantly provide clarity of business activities and performance to a range of stakeholders. This study aims to assess the reporting of sustainability-related matters, and notably the incorporation and prioritisation of the SDGs, across the real estate market of the UK by interrogating both sustainability and annual reports. Content analysis was utilised to consider the qualitative aspects of the text itself, subsequently a scoring process was employed to uncover a quantitative view. Results demonstrate that, although there is acknowledgement of the sustainability agenda among these companies, there is a focal cluster of SDGs that explicitly apply to the property sector (namely SDGs 11,12,13) and a least-important group of goals (namely SDGs 1,2,6,9,10,14,15,16), which do not relate-well with real estate activities. Based upon the calculated average quality scoring (2.19 out of 5), findings reveal firms generally convey their sustainability activities in a qualitative manner with minimal incorporation of quantitative key performance indicators. Moreover, SDG 13 achieves one of the highest scores (2.99) and this suggests the greatest focus of company intentions are directed towards climate action. However, it is important to also note that very few companies discuss specific SDG targets in their reports. Based on this evidence, it is proposed that if the companies employed goal-specific targets it would allow for a greater overview of sector performance on the goals, year-on-year, and also counter-balance concerns that firms are green-washing (or rainbow-washing) their communications and the emergence of a disconnect between proclaimed intentions and genuine measurable actions