Our future

Our future

Our future

As we move through and beyond 2024, much like all housing associations, we’ll need to navigate the challenging economic climate, continuing cost of living crisis, and increasing demands being placed on our sector.

We’re always looking at the best ways in which we can spend and invest our resources to make sure we remain a strong growing business. We’ll work to maximise every pound we have available to deliver on our Corporate Strategy for customers.

This means continuing to invest in how we delight customers and how we provide safe, well-maintained, and energy-efficient homes. But where many housing associations are actively pulling back on providing new homes due to the economic climate, we intend to deliver on our commitment to provide new homes.

We believe we have a moral obligation to help tackle the housing crisis across our region. We look forward to working with partners old and new to ensure we have sufficient financial capacity to deliver on our Corporate Strategy. This will allow us to continue to build sustainable homes, as well as invest in our existing homes.

In the 2023/2024 financial year, we provided 252 new homes with our partners, including developments in Braintree, Chelmsford, Colchester, Maldon, Rochford, Tendring, Thurrock, Epping Forest, Brentwood and East Hertfordshire. Out of these, 201 were built by us and 51 were provided by Legal & General Affordable Homes (LGAH).

In response to the Social Housing Regulation Bill, we’ll see regulation moving away from how housing associations are run and how we make our money work, to what we know about the quality of homes and the impact they have on customers. The quality of social housing has rightly been called into question and has been under the media spotlight in recent years. We’ll learn more this year about how the Regulator of Social Housing’s in-depth assessment is changing, ready for our next inspection.

We’ll start seeing the results of the tenant satisfaction measure surveys (TSMs) set by the regulator. This will provide us with more insight into tenant’s views and tell the regulator about our performance. We’ll use this research to see where there’s room for improvement and where we’re doing well. We’ll combine it with the other feedback customers already give us, to help us learn and focus on where we make changes.

We know there will be significant challenges ahead, but we’re in a good position to deliver on our Corporate Strategy. We know what we need to do, and we have the commitment of a fantastic team ready to make a difference for the people that we serve. We look forward to making a positive impact on customers and communities.