Our social impact

Social purpose is fundamental to Hyde and goes beyond providing homes and being a landlord, it’s also about creating vibrant and sustainable communities.

We’re well-aware of the financial pressures many of our customers are under, and have pledged that no-one will be evicted because of financial hardship. In return, we ask customers to work with us to help them, and to get in touch as soon as they feel they’re getting into financial difficulty.

We work with partner organisations to build resilient, thriving communities where people want to live. Additional external funding supports projects in higher-need areas, tackling everything from anti-social behaviour to isolation of older people.

Hyde Foundation and Hyde Charitable Trust invested more than £3m last year. They also secured more than £5m of contributions for our most vulnerable customers, through rent benefit payments and contributions from our supply chain partners.

Highlights

£1.1m (2021/22: £1.1m) in grants awarded through the Hyde Foundation
9,701 people (2021/22: 8,043) benefited from Hyde Charitable Trust grants
3,349 (2021/22: 2,420) customers received financial, health and jobs advice
£1.83m (2021/22: £1.65m) in social value impact delivered by our suppliers.

Hyde Charitable Trust Booster Fund

Since December 2022, we’ve pledged £217k in grants to our community partners, through the Hyde Charitable Trust’s Booster Fund, set up in response to the cost-of-living crisis.

Our partners deliver a wide variety of services to our customers and communities. Some partners need funds to pay for their increasing utility bills. Others are experiencing a growing demand for their services and need to find new ways to reach people in need. Most need to increase the salaries of their workforce, to help reduce their financial worries.
Working with others to maximise social value

The Social Value Leadership Group (SVLG) is a network of social value leads from more than 30 housing associations, local authorities and other organisations working in the housing sector. The SVLG, which is chaired by Hyde’s Social Value Manager, Chichi Onyenemelu, aims to fully-integrate social value into the culture of organisations and put it at the heart of the procurement process.
Match My Project - bringing communities and our supply chain partners together
We launched the Match My Project platform in May 2022. This virtual meeting point gives community organisations and groups the chance to find and receive help with their projects from our supply chain partners, at reduced or no extra cost. This year:
- 84 community organisations signed up
- 43 suppliers signed up
- 143 projects were supported.
Using digital knowledge and tools to support our communities

Our digital pilot started in June 2022 and will run for a year, working with customers of different ages to encourage them to get online – by offering training, working out how to make the digital experience better or just simply supporting customers to use our portal.

The pilot will help us determine how keen customers are to ‘get digital’ and whether we need to expand the pilot further.