Welcome from Helen Evans, Chief Executive
This has been a year where our business has been put to the test like never before. I’m proud that Network Homes has continued to be strong despite the unprecedented difficulties posed by the Covid-19 pandemic.
Responding to the challenging circumstances has required an enormous effort by all our colleagues. We were well prepared for the sudden transition to working from home and our priority throughout has been to keep residents living in our homes safe and provide reliable services.
We’ve also been determined to stay connected with residents despite the restrictions which have prevented many of us seeing friends and loved ones. We’ve held online residents’ meetings, discussion forums and reached out to our older and vulnerable residents over the phone to check they had the support they needed. We also ran our Big Conversation which gave residents the opportunity to tell us how we can improve our services. You can read more about it in the ‘Involving you’ section.
Despite the challenges, we’ve continued to make good progress towards our targets. We started work on building 364 new affordable homes; our overall customer satisfaction level rose to 87.9% (2019/20: 85%); and 77.7% of residents surveyed reported they trust us as a landlord. We will continue to build on these successes for the year ahead.
I also want to be honest about the areas where we haven’t done so well this year. The number of repairs we completed on time was 88.7%, below our target of 95%, and we didn’t quite meet our target for satisfaction of overall repairs, which was 82.6% against a target of 85%. While the pandemic undoubtedly had an impact on our service delivery, there will be other learning points we will look for so we can improve next year.
Alongside the pandemic, the world is facing a climate emergency. During the year we published our first Sustainability Strategy which sets out our commitment to reducing our environmental footprint and developing more environmentally responsible business practices.
The operating environment for housing associations has changed significantly over the last few years. As a result, the Network Homes Board reviewed and decided to refresh our strategic priorities and targets in December 2020, which you can find on this page along with the progress we’ve made.
More than ever, the events of this year have highlighted how important it is to our health and wellbeing to have a good home. While the circumstances have been very challenging, we’ve remained resilient and our commitment to providing safe, secure and affordable homes for as many people as possible is stronger than ever.
Update on our strategic objectives
Here we’ve set out our targets to achieve by 2023 as part of our Five Year Strategy, alongside our strategic objectives and the progress we’ve made towards achieving them this year. Our strategic objectives are important for guiding the work we do as a charitable housing association.
Increase the number of homes for people in housing need
We must do everything we can to help resolve the housing crisis and provide quality, affordable homes in the right places for people who are unable to afford the expensive open markets for home ownership and rent.
Deliver reliable resident services
It’s important that we provide reliable services to our residents all the time. We have five guiding principles for our service, so we can achieve this. They are transparency; engagement; accessibility; accountability; and consistency.
Build a great organisation
We know resident satisfaction depends on us having talented and ambitious people who feel proud to work for Network Homes. To achieve this, we need to recruit and invest in our employees as we know a great team is essential to us providing a great service.
Ambition Start building at least
1,000
affordable homes by 2023
Ambition To achieve at least
90%
overall customer satisfaction
Ambition At least
87%
of our colleagues feel proud to work for Network Homes
Progress In 2020/21 we started
364
affordable homes
Progress In 2020/21 we achieved
87.9%
customer satisfaction
Progress
87%
of our colleagues feel proud to work for Network Homes*
Increase our financial resilience
We need to be financially strong to operate for the long-term and to fulfil our social purpose to our current and future residents. Our financial resilience and our ability to stand strong in the face of external pressures is key to this.
Strengthen residents’ trust in us
We need to develop better relationships with residents as part of our ongoing commitment to deliver greater transparency, continually improve communications and offer a wide range of opportunities for residents to get involved in improving services.
Ambition
Increase operating margin year on year
Progress In 2020/21 our social housing operating margin** was
29.9%
Ambition Improve trust in us by
10%
year on year
Progress
77.7%
residents have trust in us ***
* From Internal employee engagement survey held in July 2021 .
** Social housing surplus measures the amount of money left over from renting our social housing homes after we’ve taken into account the cost of management and maintenance. The social housing operating surplus as a % of total social housing income is called social housing operating margin. The higher operating margin, the better!
*** This is the first year we've captured performance information for residents’ trust in us which we will use as the benchmark to provide a progress update next year.