Providing safe, decent and energy-efficient homes

Welcome | Our 2050 strategy | Value to society | Supporting customers | Delivering homes | Financial performance | Value for money | Our staff

Sustainable housing, and the wellbeing of our customers and their communities, are directly linked. Customers benefit from improved comfort, less risk of mould and damp, lower home repair costs, better respiratory health and children do better at school. And, because energy efficient homes produce fewer carbon emissions, this can help address climate change.

We manage 48,721 homes and our Property team’s focus is to consistently maintain them, along with communal areas and open spaces. We’re immensely proud of, and grateful for, the team’s commitment over the past year, which continued to provide an almost business as usual maintenance and repairs service during the lockdowns.

Highlights 2020/21

91% of expected repairs demand delivered during the coronavirus pandemic
83% customer satisfaction with responsive repairs (2019/20: 84%)
£29.1m invested in our stock (2019/20: £34.0m)
1,407 home improvements (kitchens, bathrooms, doors and windows) (2019/20: 1,891)
£12.6m spent on fire safety (2019/20: £20.2m)

Keeping customers safe in their homes

We spent £12.6m on fire safety in 2020/21 and since 2017, we’ve spent £63.7m. This has included removing cladding at 11 of our blocks since Grenfell.

We carried out 988 Fire Risk Assessments (FRAs) this year (2019/20: 1,648). FRAs set out the actions we must carry out (within a set time), to improve a building’s safety. At year end, we had no overdue actions and our FRAs were 60 days ahead of programme.

We received about 2,500 enquiries from customers about EWS1, cladding and building safety between January and March 2021. We worked hard to build customers’ trust, through regular communications, virtual meetings and a building safety area of our website.
Starting out on our journey to net zero

The retrofit of our homes, along with a sustainable approach to building new ones, is one of the best ways of helping to improve the health and financial wellbeing of our customers and to help the UK transition to a low-carbon economy. Our Energy and Sustainability Strategy sets out how we’ll improve our energy and environmental performance from 2020 to 2022.

We co-founded the Greener Futures Partnership this year. This is a collaboration of five major housing associations aiming to be a major voice for the social housing sector, influencing the green agenda and helping customers tackle fuel poverty, sustain tenancies and live in healthier homes.
A portfolio approach to managing our homes
A deeper understanding of the homes and other properties we own and manage ensures we provide homes that meet the needs of our customers. Selling homes no longer meeting those needs allows us to recycle charitable capital to make our homes safer, more energy efficient and decent for customers. It also funds new homes; we’ve committed to build 1.5 homes for each one we sell. In 2020/21 we:
- Sold 146 homes to local authorities, generating £28.3m
- Sold 50 homes to house families in temporary accommodation in Bromley
- Transferred 53 homes in Northampton to Greatwell Homes, generating £5.3m.
New contracts to deliver home improvements

We re-procured our stock investment contracts in 2020/21, covering kitchens and bathrooms, windows and doors, major internal and external works, roofing and cyclical decorations, saving an estimated £2m a year, over the next five years.
Setting up an in-house team to tackle long-running repair issues

Disrepairs - long-running repair issues - present a financial and reputational risk for social landlords, with solicitors encouraging customers to prevent access to their homes and to take legal action. Our new in-house London Property Management team will carry out disrepair work across the capital, giving us more control, so we can complete work faster, save time and money, improve customer satisfaction and reduce the risk of litigation.