Chief Executive's Statement
It’s hard to remember a more difficult time to be in business, to be running a housing association or to be one of our customers facing the cost of living crisis.
At settle our purpose is to help people who are struggling to find a place to live, and to help our customers stay in their homes comfortably so they can live the lives they choose. The past year has been marked not only by the ongoing pandemic and its continued impact on our wellbeing and day-to-day lives, but also by the rising cost of living and macro-economic turbulence – tough times indeed.
Here at settle our response has been ongoing support to customers, communities and colleagues, alongside a relentless focus on getting the basics right. Listening to customers is absolutely central to how we work. Throughout the year, we’ve used feedback and lessons learnt from complaints to ensure that we continue to build our services around what our customers tell us is important.
In the year, settle colleagues spoke to over 20% of our customers through the Big Door Knock, either in person or over the phone. Our average customer satisfaction score was 73%; we had some great feedback, but we also heard that in some areas we can do better. Our Basically Brilliant campaign was launched in direct response to these conversations. Basically Brilliant is all about getting the basics right day in and day out – responding to what customers tell us, demonstrating we have listened and are driving improvement.
Delivering brilliant landlord services is at the core of what we do, but in many ways it’s just the beginning. At settle we want to be more than a landlord, a commitment which led to the launch of settle plus in June 2021. settle plus focuses on identifying the support needed by any customer who is either vulnerable or experiencing reduced resilience. Over the year a total of 634 contacts were opened with 2864 actions of support made, including referrals to Community Mental Health Teams an HertsHelp, as well as providing food assistance and access to hardship funds.
Since November 2021 we’ve worked with Refuge on a project that enhances the way we provide advice, guidance and support to residents experiencing domestic abuse. We are also really proud that through our in-house Citizens Advice Bureau service, settle was able to support 162 clients with 715 reported issues during 2021/22, achieving over £200,000 in financial outcomes.
Gavin Cansfield, Chief Executive
"Basically Brilliant is all about getting the basics right day in and day out – responding to what customers tell us, demonstrating we have listened and are driving improvement."
“Listening to customers is absolutely central to how we work.”
Being more than a landlord also means playing a wider role in the neighbourhoods in which we work. The development of our Neighbourhood Plans is central to this. In one of our largest neighbourhoods, we’ve begun working alongside residents and stakeholders to identify key issues and discuss how we can work together to make a telling difference, improve outcomes for residents and create pride in place.
We are disappointed to have missed some of the targets we had set ourselves last year. This has mainly been due to catching up following delays caused by the pandemic, and the age of some of our properties. Throughout the year we have maintained our focus on ensuring that our homes are safe and comfortable. We have invested to clear the backlog, and continue to make progress and improvements to meet all targets. In particular, we have invested in our in-house teams to ensure we can deliver services in a more efficient way. We invested £8m into improving our existing homes last year, with commitment to accelerate this investment in homes built into our long-term financial plans.
One of the biggest challenges facing us all is achieving net zero carbon. At settle we thought this was an area crying out for more collaboration so we are delighted to have co-founded the Greener Herts partnership with B3 Living and Watford Community Housing to see if, together, we can achieve more. Initial work has included looking at our collective data and impact, carrying out a heat mapping exercise and accessing initiatives like WarmFront that deliver real benefits to customers.
We also remain committed to providing new homes. 182 homes were completed in the past year, a number inevitably lower than we had originally planned due to the lingering impact of the pandemic and macro-economic headwinds. Nevertheless, we remain broadly on track to achieve our strategic ambition of delivering 1,500 homes by 2024, and I have been really pleased to see our pipeline of committed properties continue to grow.
Housing Associations up and down the country are navigating a series of competing challenges – supporting customers and colleagues as the cost of living continues to spike, ensuring our services evolve to meet the changing needs of our customers, funding and delivering against decarbonisation targets, and continuing to invest in our existing homes and neighbourhoods. Responding effectively will require settle to be customer focused and data driven every step of the way, and to pursue our social purpose more decidedly than ever before. I believe that we are well placed to face these challenges and to continue to grow.