NEWTON Property Management’s 2020 Green Vision campaign sets out our objectives, which are designed to help improve the environmental credentials of our customers’ properties and in so doing, reduce CO2 and raise asset values.
Our latest EV charging station has just been installed at our customers’ Glasgow Harbour development.
Glasgow Harbour is a redevelopment of the massive Meadowside Granary complex which dominated the banks of the Clyde and overshadowed the expressway.
Over the years, many a child passenger would be asked by dad to “count the bricks”. There are now some 1200 homes in this docklands community, with additional phases due.
We were asked to speak at a seminar earlier in the year organised by the Energy Saving Trust. When we pulled up a satellite shot of the entire development, we were met with cries of astonishment when we explained that amazingly, there were no dedicated EV charge points.
Astonishing really, especially given many residents are young upwardly-mobile professionals, the majority of whom will be extremely accepting of environmental issues and climate change. I suspect there are very few, if any Trumpists residing here.
Our initial installation at Glasgow Harbour has been 100% funded by Newton. The owners of the flats will not have to pay one penny for the chargers.
The cost of charging a car is exactly the cost of the electricity that is drawn from the supply.
What we of course are doing at Glasgow Harbour – and at many other sites – is showing the residents that there is a viable alternative to fossil fuel transportation and with Newton, it does not have to be either an expensive or drawn-out process to install charging units.
Of course, this requires our shareholders to step up to provide the facility but given that the alternative is to ask the owners of a development to agree, sometimes unanimously, to an installation there is only one choice at the moment: the factor has to step up.
If ever there was a time to consider changing the Tenements Act to make decision making for Electronic Vehicle (EV) charging much easier, it is now.
Climate change is upon us: we must get people out of their gas guzzlers and into electric vehicles (EVs), not just on to buses. Personal mobility remains key to wellbeing.
Newton is up for the challenge – is the Scottish Government?
We are writing to the Housing Minister to set out our ideas for changes to tenement law.
Derek MacDonald is joint managing director of Newton Property Management. For more information please visit www.newtonproperty.co.uk
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