Chief Executive's Statement
At settle we are driven by putting residents first. We know that everyone is different. Our commitment is that we provide a service as individual as each resident.
Central to this is our ongoing drive to be Basically Brilliant. As a landlord, we need to make sure we deliver the basics consistently well, day in, day out. Basically Brilliant is our way of making sure we do this, by being consistently good at delivering services; focussing on getting it right for residents every time; and working together across settle to improve performance.
Basically Brilliant is underpinned by resident influence on our work. We have established an engagement framework aimed at scrutinising performance and amplifying the resident voice in our decision making.
The past year has marked a step change for social housing. On 20th July 2023, the Social Housing Regulation Bill received Royal Assent, paving the way for greater powers for the Regulator, strengthened consumer standards and the new complaint handling code. We welcome these changes and the improvements they will deliver for all social housing residents. Our preparations for the new regulations have been underway for some time at settle. This has included a focus on strengthening our data, compliance and processes, underpinned by resident influence - listening, learning and driving continuous improvement across all that we do.
This year marks our first full year of early surveys against the Tenant Satisfaction Measures, along with ongoing projects like our Big Door Knock, now in its sixth year, and our ‘Voice of the Resident’ panel. We have used feedback and insight to drive improvements including response times in our Customer Hub, efficiencies in our repairs service to help us respond more quickly to routine repairs and get more repairs right at the first visit, and to shape our neighbourhood improvement plan.
We launched a new model of service delivery during the year, underpinning all areas of our work in neighbourhoods. This is based on our principle of being there for all residents when they need us and increasing the support we provide to vulnerable residents to help them sustain their tenancies. The impact can be seen through colleagues achieving a social value equivalent of £3.1m last year, increased from £2.9m the previous year.
Feedback we receive from residents consistently emphasises investment in homes as one of the most important services we provide. We delivered as planned another year of increased investment on things such as replacement kitchens, bathrooms, windows, roofs and heating systems. We spent £19.7m this year, with spend during 2022/23 (£14m) and increased from £8.3m in 2021/22 and around £4m in 2020/21.
22nd March 2024 marked one year since we were awarded funding through the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, as part of our Greener Herts partnership with B3Living, Dacorum Borough Council and Watford Community Housing. The funding will enable works to a total of around 1,500 homes over a two-year programme, to bring them up to EPC C. We completed assessments to nearly 600 settle homes by the end of March, completed 443 measures in 198 homes and fully completed improvement works to 45 settle properties.
We look forward to completing our commitments during the year ahead, with several hundred more settle homes set to benefit from these improvement works, making them warmer and more comfortable to live in.
Gavin Cansfield
Chief Executive 24th September 2024
"We are grateful for all of the feedback we have received from residents, colleagues and partners."
"During recent years, our focus has been on establishing the strength of our culture at settle. We are determined to ensure that this translates into an engaged colleague base, committed to delivering the best possible outcomes with partners, for residents."
A focus during the past year has been to increase the number of stock condition surveys we have in place across all properties, underpinning our knowledge of homes and investment plans. We met our targets for the number of surveys to be completed by the end of March, we completed a total of 2,814 surveys to the year ending 31st March 2024 and exceeded our target by 424 surveys. We are on track to complete our aim for all surveys to be within five years old by the end of this financial year.
A priority for colleagues across settle during recent years has been work to prevent damp and mould in properties, and to proactively identify and mitigate cases. We are pleased to see the positive impact of the proactive measures we have put in place. The 6-month period during quarters three and four of 2023/24 showed a 48% decrease in cases raised compared with the same period in the previous year. We will continue supporting residents to raise any requests for support with damp and mould to us, and working with residents until we are confident we have addressed the root cause of each issue.
There is no doubt the external operating environment remains challenging for all businesses. Against a backdrop of ongoing global instability we see the lasting impact of economic turbulence and expect significant political change during the coming months.
The operating margin we achieved for the year was 24.6%. This reflects the challenging economic environment that we are operating in, and although within the tolerance we have agreed with our Board, this remains below our targeted level of 27%. With the conscious decision we have made to prioritise investment in existing homes, we have agreed with Board to maintain the operating margin at this level. We remain alert to pressures caused by increasing costs and higher demand, and these have been mitigated by proactive steps taken by the settle leadership team and colleagues across the business to deliver cost efficiencies where possible and appropriate.
This year marked completion of our plan that ran from 2019 to 2024. Colleagues can be proud of the achievements we have made during that time. We have achieved significant progress in how we deliver services to residents, more than doubled the amount we invest in homes and nearly doubled the number of new affordable homes we deliver each year. This is all underpinned by being a well-run business.
During the past year we have also carried out extensive engagement to shape our new plan that runs to 2030. We are grateful for all of the feedback we have received from residents, colleagues and partners. Drawing also on wider data available to us from our ongoing resident engagement, and our understanding of the external environment, our new plan is driven by what we know is important to residents.
We have a clear mission to 2030, refreshed purpose, priorities and values. Our full plan can be seen at settle 2030 plan.
During recent years, our focus has been on establishing the strength of our culture at settle. We are determined to ensure that this translates into an engaged colleague base, committed to delivering the best possible outcomes with partners, for residents. I look forward to working with colleagues and partners, and guided by our excellent Board, as we continue to deliver this.