We are dedicated to positively impacting people’s lives and communities by providing high-quality homes. We build new homes that meet people’s needs and invest in our existing homes and neighbourhoods to ensure they are well-maintained, comfortable, and safe places to live.
Housing stock by type
General needs
5,279
Independent living
1,209
Supported living
3,897
LiLAC supported living
313
Keyworker
574
Single homeless
41
Homelessness unit
36
Women’s refuge
11
Shared ownership
360
Leasehold
200
Supported shared ownership
24
Market rent
4
Investing in our homes, neighbourhoods and future
We are committed to maintaining homes to a high standard and creating places where people are proud to belong. That is why each year, we invest millions into planned maintenance and environmental sustainability works for our homes and their surrounding areas.
This year, we invested £10.1 million to modernise and improve the energy efficiency of our homes. This included fitting 200 new kitchens, 260 bathrooms, 420 doors, 150 windows, 120 roofs and over 380 heating systems. Part of this spending was allocated to high-cost works such as replacing lifts, commercial boilers, and resurfacing car parks.
We continued to expand the maintenance services that we can deliver in-house. This included establishing a team of window fitters; we plan to further expand the team in 2024/25. Bringing services in-house gives us greater control over the quality of work and the cost of materials. It also offers employment opportunities to tradespeople in the local area and creates cost savings compared to using contractors.
This year we updated our Asset Management Strategy and Environmental Sustainability Strategy to help us achieve our net zero goal by 2050. These strategies outline our approach to maintaining and managing the safety and quality of our properties and also how we are working to improve energy efficiency.
We continue to expand the services our in-house maintenance team can deliver.
Responsive repairs
This year, we completed over 52,000 repairs, an increase of 7,000 on the previous year, and spent over £7.7 million on our responsive repairs service.
Listening to tenants’ views and addressing their concerns about property safety and maintenance is essential for improving our services.
After consulting with tenants and colleagues, we made changes to improve our repair service. As a result, we piloted extended hours for urgent and routine repairs to include Saturday mornings and weekdays until 6pm.
After listening to our tenants and the experience of our specialist teams, we reviewed our main contract for the delivery of our national repairs, voids and planned maintenance service.
We moved from one national contractor to several specialist regional contractors. Consequently, our performance improved in the final quarter of 2023/24, particularly for repairs completed on time, which reached 89.3% for emergencies and 82.9% for non-emergencies.
We value tenant feedback, which helps us make changes that address their needs and concerns. This has significantly improved our repairs service, increasing tenant satisfaction from 80.1% in 2022/23 to 84.4% in 2023/24. Additionally, customer complaints have decreased by almost 20% over the past 12 months. During the same time frame, compliments for Property Services employees from tenants have increased by 20%.
We invested over £38.6 million into repairs, maintenance and compliance works, including energy efficiency improvements.
Our performance improved in the final quarter of 2023/24,
particularly for repairs completed on time
Safe and sound homes
We take our responsibility as a social housing provider seriously, and our top priority is providing our tenants with safe, high-quality, and healthy homes.
As part of our commitment to the Safety and Quality Standard, we invest around £7 million every year to ensure that our homes comply with strict health and safety standards. Throughout the year, we conducted 599 fire risk assessments, 6,970 gas safety checks, 1,981 electrical checks, 62 asbestos inspections, and 361 water hygiene risk assessments.
Throughout 2023/24, we completed over 4,000 stock condition surveys, recording the age of the main property components. These surveys allowed us to identify and rectify any hazards we found under the Housing Health and Safety Rating System.
They also helped us pinpoint properties failing the Decent Homes Standard, so we could complete any necessary repairs or investments to improve them. As of 31 March 2024, only 0.16% of our properties failed this standard, and every property has a plan to improve it.
During the year, we proudly received a RoSPA Gold Medal and our fifth consecutive Gold Award. The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA) awards are well-known for health and safety excellence and receive almost 2,000 entries each year from over 50 countries. RoSPA, which has been running for nearly 70 years, rewards organisations, individuals, and teams that excel in health and safety. The Gold Medal is given to organisations that have achieved the RoSPA Gold Award for five to nine consecutive years.
We take pride in providing a safe and secure workplace for our employees, tenants and customers, and this award is a testament to that.
A proactive approach to managing damp and mould
Following the government’s response to the tragic death of Awaab Ishak, several key pieces of guidance and legislation have come into effect to improve how social housing landlords address and resolve issues of damp and mould in tenants’ homes.
This includes the publication of the Regulator of Social Housing’s report on damp and mould in June 2023, the introduction of Awaab’s Law as part of changes to the Social Housing Regulation Act 2023, and the introduction of new Consumer Standards from April 2024. These changes form a new era of regulation for the social housing sector, aiming to give tenants greater powers and improve access to quick and fair solutions to problems.
There has been an increase in requests for damp and mould property inspections this year. However, this is something we encouraged and were prepared for. We have always aimed to be responsive and proactive in tackling any issues of damp, mould, or disrepair, and we continually work to strengthen our response to ensure the ongoing safety of our tenants and their homes. In August 2023, we launched our new Healthy Homes programme, to take an even more proactive and responsive approach to damp, mould and disrepair issues by conducting a full survey of all our properties.
The Healthy Homes Team prioritises properties with reports of damp and mould concerns and completes full risk assessments of our empty properties. Since August, they have completed 2,250 inspections and raised over 3,000 repair orders to address risks in our properties. No severe cases were identified in any of our properties.
Healthy Homes Team
Investment in new homes
More high-quality, affordable homes are urgently needed to tackle the housing shortage. As a social housing provider, it is our responsibility to continue providing high-quality homes of all kinds.
This includes homes for social and affordable rent, shared ownership, homes for older people, and supported accommodation for autistic adults, people with a learning disability, an acquired brain injury, or a mental health condition.
In March 2024, we successfully delivered our five-year Development Strategy, which commenced in April 2019. This provided nearly 1,000 new homes, with the majority delivered across Lancashire. During 2023/24, we delivered 82 affordable rent homes, 59 shared ownership homes, and 35 supported living homes.
A total of £40 million was invested in new homes, of which £4 million came from Homes England to support the building of affordable housing and £3 million from the NHS and other sources to help with the delivery of supported living accommodation.
A new 5-year Development Strategy has recently been approved and adopted. This strategy covers the period from April 2024 to March 2029 and will deliver a similar-scale programme of new homes.
We continue to work with Onward Homes to deliver against our strategic partnership grant funding commitment to Homes England to support the delivery of more than 400 new affordable homes by March 2028. One development is complete, providing 27 affordable units (20 with the support of grant funding), and four developments are underway, which, when complete, will provide a further 271 homes.
Our first purpose-built Extra Care scheme in Lancaster is progressing well on-site and will deliver 92 high-specification one and two-bedroom homes for those aged 55 and over in early 2025. The scheme will include assisted bathing, a hairdressing facility, a games room, a roof terrace and a laundry room. Tailored care and support packages will also be available to help tenants live independently.
Our house-building subsidiary, Concert Homes, was established in 2017 to develop homes for outright sale. Any surplus is reinvested back into the Group to provide more affordable homes. This year, Concert Homes completed 74 homes at two developments on the Fylde Coast, including 27 affordable homes for rent in rural Weeton.
NEDs and Senior Management Team on site at the Extra Care scheme in Lancaster
In March 2024, we successfully delivered our five-year Development Strategy, which commenced in April 2019.
Tackling the rural housing crisis
Creating affordable home ownership through shared ownership
Real Stories
Meet Stephen
Real stories
Meet Gary
Real Stories
Meet Vicky
Supporting keyworkers
As Progress Living, we work in partnership with United Lincolnshire Hospitals Trust (ULHT) to support the NHS in providing high-quality, on-site housing for professionals, medical students, hospital visitors and outpatients. We offer flexible renting options, from one-night to long-term stays, to suit the Trust and its employees. We manage 573 purpose-built units across three hospital sites in Lincoln, Boston and Grantham.
In 2023/24, we achieved an 88% occupancy rate (against a target of 91.7%), contributing to the Group’s financial stability.
We completed 1,867 repairs, achieving 100% on-time completion of urgent repairs and 95.1% on-time completion of routine repairs against a target of 85%. We also successfully installed 8 new kitchens.
We continue to work closely with the Trust to meet their housing needs, including the continued support of the Trust’s successful international recruitment drive as they look to recruit hard to fill vacancies across the Trust. Throughout 2023/24, we have housed more than 150 international recruits, ensuring we have employees on-site upon their arrival in the UK to help them settle into their homes and become accustomed to the local area.
We completed 1,867 repairs, achieving 100% on-time completion of urgent repairs and 95.1% on-time completion of routine repairs against a target of 85%.
Real stories
Dr Haris Kalim Ullah moved from Pakistan, where individual homes are the norm, to experience shared accommodation for the first time in England with Progress Living.
I feel like this is my real home, and the housekeepers, Karen and Anna, feel like family members to me. Words are not enough to describe how welcoming they were during my stay.Any concerns, if ever, they solve like a personal matter. I have every amenity a person should need for a good quality of life, including a TV, microwave, fridge, washing machine, iron, a car park, and en-suite bathroom. I am really enjoying my stay here, and I am thankful to Progress Living for all the efforts they are making.
Safe and healthy communities
Our tenants have a right to feel safe and secure in their homes and communities, so we must ensure our neighbourhoods are looked after and are good places to live, work, visit, and play.
Our community safety colleagues work closely with tenants and key partners, including the police, social services, and healthcare providers, to tackle and resolve neighbourhood nuisance, anti-social behaviour (ASB), and hate crime. We addressed 678 ASB cases this year, 31 fewer than last year. Despite this decrease, our tenant satisfaction score for our community safety services was 71% against a target of 85%. We worked with our Tenants' Voice - Improving Services group to review the service, which was instrumental in identifying areas of improvement, particularly as some of the tenants involved had direct experience with ASB and how we dealt with it.
We continue to address the complex issues surrounding ASB by using a mix of prevention, support, and enforcement. During the year, we provided training sessions for our employees to ensure they are well-equipped to handle ASB.
Access to homes for gas and electrical safety checks is critical for tenant safety. Whilst we saw a reduction in court applications for access, the number of no-access cases increased from 452 to 518, partly due to the impact of the cost of living. We are currently reviewing our processes to address no-access situations better in the future.
This year, we invested over £100,000 in environmental improvements in our neighbourhoods and appointed 2 new regional housing manager roles to support the work of our 4 Area Housing Teams. We have also reinstated our monthly neighbourhood walkabouts. These are led by housing officers to proactively address issues and ensure that the local area looks attractive and functions well. We do this in partnership with our key stakeholders and encourage our tenants to participate to raise any areas of concern and maintain strong relationships with their Area Housing Team.
In addition, we consulted with our tenants to select our newly appointed grounds maintenance contractor, Nurture, who began work in May 2023.
I was very pleased with the way Leeann handled my case. Always keeping me informed on what was happening with my neighbour’s ASB.
Real Stories
A tenant had been involved in long-standing ASB issues related to alcohol use, including assaulting a neighbour, playing loud music, and causing disturbances late at night and in the early hours of the morning. We rehoused the assaulted neighbour and served a notice seeking possession on the tenant, followed by an application for possession.
After proceedings began, the tenant sought help from Inspire, a drug and alcohol support service, and subsequently, the ASB ceased. The tenant also took steps to make amends with other neighbours affected by their behaviour. We referred all parties to mediation to help rebuild the previously positive neighbourly relationships.
As the issues were resolved, a two-year Suspended Possession Order was agreed upon in court. This order allows the tenant to remain in their home while reinforcing the tenancy conditions. To date, there have been no breaches of the Suspended Possession Order.
Vibrant communities
Creating homes is about much more than bricks and mortar - making neighbourhoods happy and vibrant places to live is important to us. We aim to provide high-quality services, create sustainable communities, and promote pride and opportunity.
In consultation with our tenants, we have identified four key priorities – clean, green, safe and connected – that are important in shaping our approach.
We have started delivering on these priorities through various community-centred projects. For example, in St Annes, near Blackpool, we have worked with tenants on three environmental improvement initiatives. This included the transformation of a ‘green wall’, a community garden refurbishment, and a neighbourhood tidy-up.
In nearby Lytham, the Estate Caretaking Team worked with volunteers and the Kickstart caretaker assistant to spruce up and replant some of our green community spaces. In Accrington, we held a community clean-up day that included helping tenants remove unwanted bulky items from their homes.
At an independent living scheme in Penwortham, we upgraded external pathways to ensure better access to the building and its attractive communal gardens.
Again, in Penwortham, the Estate Caretaking Team completed a garden makeover at another independent living scheme to make the entrance area more pleasant for tenants.
In Accrington, we held a community clean-up day that included helping tenants remove unwanted bulky items from their homes.
Managing arrears and voids
This year, we are pleased to report that our rent arrears have decreased, with current tenant arrears at 4.6% against a target of 4.7% and former tenant arrears at 0.8% against a target of 0.9%. Satisfaction with our arrears process fell short of our target at 78.8% against a target of 85%. However, our void rent loss was better than anticipated, with a rate of 7% against a target of 7.2%.
Collecting rent on time is crucial for our cash flow, but we also want to ensure our tenants receive guidance and support if they face financial difficulties. Our new Tenancy Sustainability Team is dedicated to helping people with budgeting, debt, and benefits and providing practical support for people experiencing extreme hardship. Additionally, we have 'Preferred Landlord Status', which enables us to work closely with our tenants and the Department of Work and Pensions to expedite Universal Credit applications.
Managing our empty homes effectively is really important, especially as we know there is a shortage of affordable housing in our communities. Our rent loss performance was 7%, better than our target of 7.2%, and our average time to relet our homes across our general needs and supported living portfolio was 153.8 days against a target of 154 days. The specialist nature of our RWP supported living portfolio contributes significantly to the time it takes us to relet properties. General needs relet performance was 21.5 days against a target of 24 days. Turnover of our homes was lower than the target of 8.8% against a target of 10%, and for RWP supported living, it was 9% against a target of 10%, which is positive overall.
Our rent loss performance was 7%, better than our target of 7.2%, and our average time to relet our homes across our general needs and supported living portfolio was 153.8 days against a target of 154 days.
Performance highlights
11,948
owned or managed homes
176
new-build homes
£10.1m
invested in improving homes
£7m
invested to make sure our homes are safe
£38.6m
invested in repairs, maintenance and compliance works
£40m
invested in the development of new affordable homes