FMJ Facilities Management magazine providing industry-specific intelligence to FM and property professionals
Wates Property Services has taken the next step in its commitment to eliminating waste and carbon from its operations by 2025 with the delivery of its first fleet of electric commercial vehicles.
The 10 new fully electric vans will be used to support Wates’ repairs and maintenance service contracts across the country. Following the first rollout of electric vans, Wates will continue to work towards having a fully electric fleet.
Wates has pledged three bold targets to ensure it creates zero harm to the environment by 2025, including net zero carbon emissions from its operations and operational vehicles, zero waste from onsite operations and finally to create a positive impact on nature from all operations.
As part of the move to become fully electric, Wates is investing in the UK’s EV charging infrastructure and will be installing electric vehicle charging points at operatives’ homes, and introducing charging facilities at the business’ offices and depots. Operatives will also receive driver induction training around using the electric vehicles and charge points.
David Morgan, Managing Director of Wates Property Services, commented: “Introducing our first fleet of electric vehicles is an important step for us and underpins our commitment to becoming completely net zero by 2025. If we can reduce emissions from our commercial vehicles, we can make a positive contribution to reducing our carbon footprint.
“Our vehicle fleet is intrinsic to our property services offering, and switching to fully electric vehicles will also help us to improve service delivery for our clients. We will continue to introduce more electric vehicles in the coming months, as part of our responsibility to reduce and reverse the impact we are having on our planet.”
As part of Wates Property Services’ contributions to the UK’s net zero journey, the business is also expanding its presence in the housing retrofit sector, working with its clients to undertake major retrofit programmes and help them achieve Energy Performance Certificate C ratings across their estates.
Wates launched its partnership with Energy Specifics in November 2020, to provide a fully compliant, carbon-reduction retrofitting service with the objective of providing landlords with the tools to deliver a ‘whole house’ energy saving retrofit solution.
“Customer engagement” has become a buzzword in the facilities management sector. Typically, it’s talked about as something radical and transformative – which can make it sound expensive, intimidating and overwhelming.
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