Financial highlights

 

We own and manage over 11,700 homes and provide services for over 27,000 customers. The unfortunate economic conditions that the UK faces means that there will always be a demand for our services and growth through the development of more properties to meet housing need.

We’ve adapted well to the changes affecting the UK social housing sector and the wider economy. Since 2011 we’ve been developing new homes without grant subsidy from central government.

2022/2023 was the first year of our new Corporate Strategy. It was also a year dominated by global and economic shocks and uncertainties. The huge spike in energy prices has been sorely felt, both directly in the costs of heating our homes, but also through the significantly high levels of inflation we’ve seen. From buying groceries, to buying the materials to repair homes or build new ones, the cost-of-living crisis continues to be tough for many people and businesses. Alongside some political decisions, this has also weakened the UK economy, with the high levels of inflation being met by rapidly increasing interest rates. For our homeowner customers, this has made it more difficult for people to afford their mortgages or even buy a home. For CHP, we’ve been protected through our cautious approach to the loans we take being mostly fixed rates, but when we do need to raise more money, that will cost us more than has been seen for a long time. 

The Leadership Team have worked hard during the last financial year to enhance our financial rigour. With rent increases being held down below inflation, it’s been essential for us to try to limit cost increases, so we can maximise what we can deliver to our customers through repairs and improvements to homes.

Despite the challenging environment, we’ve continued to deliver a good financial performance in 2023/2024 with turnover for the year at £76.6m, and an operating surplus of £25.9m alongside strong operational measures. These include a low level of rent arrears (collecting over 99 percent of rent due), reduced re-let times, and lower rent loss from empty homes. This resulted in an increased operating margin of 33.8 percent, which was contributed to by sales of shared ownership equity to for-profit partners, and in a stronger EBITDA MRI improving to 111.4 percent from the previous year. We had committed debt funding of £616.3m and drawn funding totalling £516.1m. Of our committed undrawn facilities available for immediate drawing, we had £100.1m and £25.4m cash in hand, representing total available liquidity of £125.5m. These resources would be considered sufficient to fund 33 months’ worth of commitments. 

 

Rating and regulation

Regulator of Social Housing

We’re pleased to retain our G1 rating for governance and V2 rating for financial viability from the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH). This grading was reaffirmed by the RSH in December 2023 via its annual Stability Check.

In maintaining the highest possible G1 grading the RSH recognises that we’re well governed and in a strong position to continue delivering on our corporate objectives.

Our V2 grading recognises that we’re a strong growing business with sound financial plans in place. It takes into account that we have an ambitious development programme to deliver more homes to help meet housing need in the region and reflects our commitment to becoming carbon Net Zero, which includes our investment to improve the energy efficiency of our homes.

S&P Global

We received an upgrade in our credit ratings this year from S&P Global to ‘A-’ with a stable outlook in our annual review.

This rating expects our financial performance to remain strong and is based on several factors. These include our development programme, our strong liquidity position, and our timely response to the challenges presented by the volatile economic environment we’re operating in. We provided 252 new homes in 2023/2024 with our partners. As part of our Corporate Strategy for 2022-2025, we’re committed to providing 1,500 new affordable homes.