Theme 2: Great for our homes and communities

We’ll invest significantly in our homes and places to make sure they meet the needs of our diverse customers, now and into the future. After all, Great Homes, Great Communities is our vision … we’re in it for the long-term!

We’ll continue to build significant numbers of new homes for rent, sale and supported living to make sure we continue to do our bit to tackle the housing crisis in the North West, South Yorkshire and the wider Sheffield City Region. This also means we’ll invest millions in our existing homes to make sure they continue to be safe, warm, suitable and affordable places where our customers want to stay.

More than this, we’ll play our part in making sure our neighbourhoods are attractive places where people want to live and put down roots. This might mean that we choose to divest of some homes that no longer meet our quality standards or no longer meet local needs.

We’ll continue to play our part as a community anchor in the neighbourhoods where we have a significant number of homes. Working closely with partners and the local community, we’ll ensure that these remain thriving communities.

How we’ll do it

• Build c4,000 new homes including a greater number of high density schemes to meet local housing needs alongside managing new Build to Rent apartment schemes developed by private sector partners and managed by Plumlife. We’ll plan how to adapt our management model to support the creation of these new
  communities to ensure they are thriving, desirable places to live.
• Revise our Home standard in collaboration with customers.
• Invest millions in our homes using data and insight to establish programmes for renewals and cyclical maintenance to make sure homes retain their kerb appeal. We’ll ensure we have a plan for every home.
• Tap into public funding wherever we can to supplement our investment in warm homes.
• Invest in developing our systems and new technology to help us understand how effectively our homes meet customers’ needs. Over time this will help us to target investment where it’s needed, and support us to transition away from a ‘break-fix’ model of maintenance towards a more proactive approach. This will help save money while offering a better service!
• Implement a model that will enable us to assess the financial and energy performance of our homes.
• Establish clear neighbourhood plans for every neighbourhood where we own a large proportion of homes.
• Review our role in place-based partnerships so we are clear on the role that we play relative to other partners and understand the unique contribution we can make to tackle the issues that matter to customers.
• Review and refresh our Carbon Management Strategy to set targets for our journey to net zero over the long term.