Tenant Satisfaction Measure 04: How satisfied or dissatisfied are you that Great Places provides a home that is well maintained?
In 2022/23, we spent a total of £17.2 million to make improvements to our customers’ homes and on keeping them and our buildings safe.
We completed some big investment projects this year, some of the highlights include making Clifford Court in Stockport, Windmill House in Blackpool, and Greyfriars in Sheffield better places to live.
We also updated our NHS Key Worker homes at the Royal Oldham Hospital. Oak House and Beech House contain 52 rooms managed by Great Places for medical professionals coming to work in the local area. These homes were built a long time ago, in the 1970s, so we have given them a makeover. Refurbishments included updates to the rooms, bathrooms, communal lounge, bedrooms, and new roof.
Along with major investment projects, the key investment headlines in the past financial year included spending:
Hear about our improvement works to Clifford Court from our project manager, Kulsoom. Customers also talk about how the improvements have made a difference. One customer says: “It was a little bit gloomy, but now it is bright and breezy and it’s lovely to live here”.
Alongside the regular work we are carrying out to update kitchens and bathrooms, we want all of our homes to be warm and energy-efficient for our customers, so they are comfortable to live in and don’t cost the earth to heat. Our decarbonisation retrofit programme also remains an important part of the team’s work as we look to meet the environmental commitment of becoming a net-carbon-zero business by 2038. In the current cost of living crisis, improving the efficiency of our homes has become even more important for our customers, too.
Our current focus is on getting our homes to have a minimum energy rating (EPC C) and in the past 12 months we have reduced the number of homes below this target to 3,360. To support our work in this area, we successfully bid for £1.4 million in funding from Wave 2 of the Government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, which will support a range of works to get 396 homes in Greater Manchester and Sheffield to a C rating over the next two years.
Retrofit refers to any improvement work on an existing building to improve its energy efficiency, making them easier to heat, able to retain that heat for longer, and replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy.
In 2021-22, we secured funding to carry out a study of our Richmond Park Heat Networks; nine heating systems serving 299 customers in Sheffield. During 2022-23 we have built on this, and a specialist consultancy called Fairheat has produced a plan to improve the existing networks’ fuel efficiency, reduce emissions, and lower costs for customers. The total cost of these works is estimated to exceed £3 million, with 50% of the costs for these improvements being covered by funding secured from the Department of Energy Security & Net Zero. More heat network studies are also planned to take place at our Elk View Court and Tulloch Court extra care schemes in Blackpool and Hutton Lodge in Withington.
We are working hard to ensure our customers’ homes are professionally managed and well maintained, including a focus on fire safety.
