Looking after our residents and their homes is our top priority.
The housing annual report is an opportunity for us to be open and transparent with our residents on how we have performed as a housing service over the past year and what we are doing to improve. There is much work to be done in the housing sector and we are committed to improving our customer experience.
Read the 2023 to 2024 annual report
Report at a glance
Our housing and residents
Up to 31 March 2024, we had:
- 10,959 council homes
- 4,719 leasehold and shared ownership homes
- 29 high-rise building (over 18 metres)
- 19 hostel buildings
- 32,245 total residents
- 26,378 residents
- 1,093 residents in sheltered accommodation
- 4,774 leaseholders
Finances
Total income: £77.3 million
Total expenditure: £81.4 million (including £4.1 million drawn down from reserves)
We spent:
- 14% on landlord services and community housing
- 8% on property and estate services
- 2% on housing development
- 50% on HRA delivery, utilities, financing
- 26% on repairs, building safety (excluding major works)
Tenant satisfaction
We commissioned a third party to survey around 1,000 of our residents per year and enable us to understand their satisfaction across a range of measures laid out by the Regulator of Social Housing.
51.7% of you told us you were satisfied overall but these scores are different across the 12 measures.
This information allows us to understand how you feel about the services you receive, recognise areas that are performing well, and identify areas for improvement. We want to deliver a first-class housing service and we are committed to being honest with you about our performance.
Full breakdown of our tenant satisfaction measures
Building safety
- 54.5% satisfaction that home is well maintained
- 62.1% satisfaction that home is safe
The safety of our tenants and leaseholders is our priority. We work hard to make sure that all our homes are safe.
As at 31 March 2024, our building safety compliance was:
- 95.1% asbestos
- 96.1% communal gas
- 90.4% domestic gas
- 99.6% fire risk assessments
- 94.3% lift insurance inspection (LOLER)
- 91.3% electrical installation condition reporting (EICR)
- 99.7% water risk assessment compliance
We aim to achieve 100% compliance across each of these areas and are improving our data, systems and capacity to enable us to do so.
Listening to our residents
Our ambition is that our residents are core to influencing our services and holding us accountable to help us improve. We want to create an effective approach to resident engagement that makes every customer contact count, encourages wider resident involvement in service delivery, and enables us to listen to tenants and use their insights to improve our services.
We are forming co-production groups and workshops for each service area, where residents can review and shape our strategies, policies, procedures, and processes.
One area where we need to listen and respond to our residents better, is complaints. We are taking steps to make sure we respond to complaints more effectively, address the problems that cause them in the first place, and use the learning from them to improve our services.
Improving our repairs service
We know that our repairs service needed to improve because of your level of satisfaction with it and the number of complaints we received about it. We are increasing our capacity to respond to repairs by engaging a second day-to-day contractor and a specialist damp and mould contractor. We are making it easier for residents to report repairs directly by telephone, online, and to a member of staff.
We are improving how we communicate with you about the status of your repair and offering more flexibility around when repairs operatives can visit you. We are making sure that we follow up with you following a repair and remedying it if you are unsatisfied. We are prioritising repairs that pose a potential risk to health and safety.
Improving your homes and estates
We are completing a comprehensive stock condition survey during 2023 to 2024. This will enable us to effectively target capital spending and prioritise scheduled repairs to where they are most needed. A targeted capital investment programme should reduce the numbers of emergency repairs that are needed and help to increase tenant satisfaction.
Improving your neighbourhood
We work hard, with our dedicated parks and estates patrol service, to target patrols where residents raise concerns about criminal or antisocial behaviour. We also fund a dedicated estates-based police team to proactively problem-solve and engage with the local community. This is to help make sure that our estates and neighbourhoods are safe and appealing places to live.