80399Plum Data Sustainability IndexClosedCollaborative R&DInnovate UKPlum Data is creating an objective sustainability index for the holiday park and camping sector. The sector has no meaningful sustainability measurement. That matters because Covid-19 and change resulting from it have finally brought into stark clarity the need for park businesses to develop forward in a positive way with their local communities and to embark on the route towards positive environmental impact. Failure to do so will increasingly damage business's ability to operate effectively, gain permission for change and development, secure funding and attract desired customers. The index will help businesses and the sector as a whole to measure where they are now, plan their necessary evolution and communicate their messages to stakeholders who will more distinguish meaningful facts from greenwashing. The sector has natural advantages that mean this approach can strengthen its relative position and secure long term viability. We will create an objective index that realistically reflects the sustainability performance of each park and business. The overall index will consist of a number of specific sub-indices driven by data that is relevant and easily reported by sector operators. It is not to be reliant on surveys or one-off studies or ad hoc recognition of isolated enhancements. The data collection will be continuous/regular and as automated or otherwise effortless as possible, and we will provide the outputs online on a park, group, region, subsector and industry basis. Just as with Plum's core commercial performance products, members will be able to see their own performance data, and how they stand and are evolving relative to peers and relevant parts of the industry (and perhaps other sectors). The comparator data will be anonymised and aggregated. Our initial definition of sustainability measures the impact a business and its customers have on * The environment * The community The environment includes impact related to: * Energy * Waste & pollution (those first two will include transport as well as on-site impacts) * Water * Food * Biodiversity / Natural Capital * These include existing impacts plus new ones such as extra PPE, packaging, plastic waste and non-use of public transport due to Covid-19 Built-environment including accommodation life-cycle * Transport * Community includes * Local employment * Economic benefit * Positive interaction * It may also include health and wellbeing of staff, customers and community This project leverages the private investment already made into Plum Data, which has been built as an innovative online b2b software-as-a-service business to collect standardised raw commercial data from holiday park sector businesses, which it transforms into unique automatically market-benchmarked management decision data. That existing commercial activity and asset data will be added to the new sustainability data generated by the project to put the sustainability index into the context it needs usefully drive Covid-19 recovery and continuing sustainability improvements.