Bellway has won a prestigious award for its strategy to reduce carbon emissions across the business as it helps lead the housebuilding industry towards net zero.

The company, which is based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and builds homes across England, Scotland and Wales, scooped the prize for Best Carbon Reduction Innovation or Practice at the 2024 Building Innovation Awards.

The award was presented at a gala dinner and awards ceremony held at The Hilton Deansgate in Manchester on Thursday (17 October).

Carbon reduction is central to Bellway’s Better with Bellway sustainability strategy, which aims to put people and the planet first.

The company has taken an all-encompassing approach to the delivery of low-carbon homes – through pioneering research, collaboration with the energy industry, and sharing findings and knowledge with the wider housebuilding industry. Bellway has also made highly significant progress towards science-based carbon reduction targets, which have been independently validated by the SBTi.

Simon Park, Group Head of Sustainability for Bellway, said: “Carbon reduction forms one of the three key priorities of our over-arching Better with Bellway sustainability strategy and we are delighted that our industry-leading work in the drive towards net zero has been recognised at the Building Innovation Awards.

“The ability to deliver carbon reduction at scale is an essential part of Bellway’s low-carbon strategy – in fact, scaling up is the very purpose of it, to ensure the industry can meet the challenges faced by climate change.

“We are taking the lessons learned from the experimental Future Home we have built in a climate chamber at The University of Salford – where pioneering research is being conducted on a range of low-carbon technologies – and rolling out this knowledge to live development sites across the country.

“Homes heated by air source heat pumps are now being built by each of our divisions and we’re the first national housebuilder to partner with energy provider Octopus on low-carbon Zero Bills homes.

“We have also created a Future Hub within four Future Home exemplar plots at our Barton Quarter development in Bolton to provide training for our employees and other small and medium-sized housebuilders on Future Home technologies. This is spreading knowledge and expertise more widely, to help deliver the changes required to meet net-zero targets.”

The first results from Bellway’s Future Home at The University of Salford’s Energy House 2.0 facility were published in January this year, showing that the fabric of the house closely reflects the proposed Future Homes Standard.

Bellway has also started construction at several ‘no gas’ developments, where air source heat pumps will be installed at every plot. These are at Springstead Village in Cherry Hinton near Cambridge, Ivy Hill in Bacton, Suffolk, and The Willows in Ancaster, Lincolnshire.

Meanwhile, Bellway’s first Zero Bills homes have been builtat Victoria Gate in Stafford. Each property features roof-integrated solar panels, a domestic battery and an air source heat pump, alongside Octopus Energy’s Kraken energy management platform. To find out more about Bellway’s sustainability strategy, visit https://sustainability.bellwayplc.co.uk/carbon-reduction.