Sustainability is a topic increasingly broached or even interrogated by investors. They care about the credentials of the underlying assets held by funds and the companies or institutions acquiring, developing and managing them. This has become an influential factor in attracting new capital or retaining existing fund commitments. Certainly, these conversations have formed an important part of our successful fundraising activities around UKPIF II (our second UK property income fund) and were a major factor in our award of the National Employment Savings Trust ethical mandate, which credited our ability to recognise the “importance of sustainability in real estate construction and management in terms of generating long-term value for investors.” But how do we measure sustainability in absolute terms?

With a growing plethora of rating bodies and certificates in our midst (UN Global Compact, FTSE4Good, Dow Jones Sustainability Index, UN PRI, Business in the Community, Green