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.

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.

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.

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