At the end of 2022, we published our second Responsible Business Report.

The report takes a close look at everything that we’re doing as a business to progress on environmental, social and governance issues and the changes we’re making to ensure that we’re doing the right things – not only for our customers but for our people and our planet, too.

We wanted to take a moment to look back at our greatest achievements of the year and look ahead to the challenges and opportunities ahead.

View the full report here, or read on for some of the key takeaways…

• We have made a commitment to achieve Net Zero by 2050, this will require significant and continued support from government policy and industry but we’re confident that this is a milestone we will reach. We are focussed on reducing the emissions of our operational footprint by 2030 and are taking action now to mitigate our current and future emissions. At our Head Office, this will include converting to LED lighting and upgrading our heating and cooling system. Other options being explored include installing solar panels, grey water harvesting and centralising waste streams
• A big achievement in 2022 was the Platinum accreditation awarded to us by Investors in People – the highest possible rating held by only 5% of those UK companies reviewed. Positively, 95% of people surveyed agreed that they were proud to tell people that they work at Paragon, which is a testament to our commitment to employee connection, engagement, wellbeing and organisational culture.
• We continued to support communities both locally and nationally, raising over £75,000 for charity in 2022 and taking part in 286 volunteering days. We aim to increase this to 400 days in 2023. We raised £31,000 for our charity of the year, Mind, through a number of fundraising activities including a Snowdon walk, a 24-hour non-stop cycle and a forest trek, as well as a range of more relaxed fundraisers such as bake sales, raffles and clothing donations. We aim to support our 2023 Charity of the Year, Newlife, in raising over £35,000.

Funding greener projects:

• In mortgages, our green mortgage incentives support landlords applying for funding on properties with an EPC A-C rating. We are actively working toward retrofit options to support customers whose property rating is under EPC C, in order to help them upgrade properties to EPC C and above
• In Savings, we launched our first green savings product, which allowed our savers to invest in green initiatives funding buy-to-let mortgages on properties with an EPC rating of A-C
• Commercial Lending saw the introduction of our Financing a Better Future campaign, where we began to offer tailored finance for green assets; establishing a greater appetite for more sustainable equipment, machinery and vehicles
• We also lent just under £12m under our Green Homes initiative in Development Finance, which supports new housebuilders developing new domestic properties with the highest energy performance standards

These are just a few of the things we are doing to contribute to a better and more sustainable future. For more information, read the full Responsible Business Report here.