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Our focus
in the last year
“We are in the midst of a housing crisis
and could not justify having five locations
for ourselves; we had to reduce the number
of offices we worked from.”
Customer Annual Review 2016
These are the
decisions we
made:
We provide homes
for those who would
otherwise struggle to
find housing
Gavin Cansfield, CEO
2 under-used
CHALLENGES
FOR US:
offices closed – staff moved
to one contact centre
£900,000
made from selling the Baldock
office will build 5 new homes
£70,000
received per year from renting
out our Hitchin office will pay
the interest on a loan to
build 70 new homes
22,000
people are on housing
waiting lists in Hertfordshire
alone. This affects families
across the areas in which
we work.
Part of our social purpose is to provide much needed new homes,
whether for rent, shared ownership or outright sale. We need to
balance the money we invest in your existing homes and meeting
the demand for housing.
With the money
that’s left we build
more homes
As a result of the
1% rent reduction
change we
estimate we will
lose £17 million
in income over
4 years
Most of our
income
is from rent
Which then pays
for bills like repairs,
maintenance, staff
costs and interest
on loans
£350,000
saved from closing the
costly Privilege scheme,
re-invested in a team of
3 helping 75 customers
maintain their tenancies
In 2015/16 we built 144 new homes.
Shrinking our
workforce by 48
We are a profit for purpose organisation and what money is left
after paying the bills is put towards providing good affordable
homes for those who would otherwise struggle to find housing.
Our purpose hasn’t changed, but how we operate as a business
had to change.
We took a long hard look at where we were spending money and
where we could cut our costs with the minimum of disruption to
your services.
Blackhorse Road development,
Letchworth Garden City
Despite the rent reduction we
aim to build an average of 150
homes a year for the next
three years.
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