Strategic Report

Looking forward

Our 2019-2024 strategy sets out our ambition of not only what we want to have delivered by 2024 but crucially how we deliver it.

Our strategic objectives around delivering good services, providing decent homes and developing more homes are consistent with many housing associations; we want settle’s unique selling point to be how we deliver our services. This is about being a landlord that our customers trust and having services that are designed around good quality and feedback from face-to-face engagement. It is also about ensuring that we continue to provide safe, secure and high-quality housing that remains genuinely affordable to people struggling to find a place to live.

Our colleagues are key to realising our ambition. They are passionate about our social purpose and ensuring we give something back to customers and communities. Together with listening to the voice of colleagues, what they see and hear will help underpin our continuous improvement of services.

As we get close to being halfway through this strategy timeframe, we will spend time during 2021/22 reviewing the progress we have made and where we feel there is opportunity to amplify key areas of activity and where we can also demonstrate increased ambition. The past 12 months have seen an increased focus on resident engagement, decarbonisation and progress towards a new decent homes standard. During this period of uncertainty, it is difficult to determine the extent of the longer-term economic impact, and we will continue to closely monitor this.

As the external environment continues to evolve, the fundamentals of the housing crisis remain the same; research commissioned by the National Housing Federation (NHF) and Crisis identified a need for 340,000 homes each year in England to 2031, including a need for 145,000 affordable homes – comprising 90,000 homes for social rent, 30,000 for intermediate rent, and 25,000 for shared ownership. Despite the challenges we face, settle is in a good position to react. We have a strong, well-run social business and these fundamentals will help us manage the challenges we will undoubtably face in the delivery of our purpose.

Delivering more homes

We recognise the important role we have to play in responding to the housing need across the localities in which we work. Our new strategy commits us to delivering 1,500 homes over the next five years.

Over recent years, we have focused on the delivery of affordable homes; 90% of homes that we plan to build will be affordable – either rent or shared ownership. We also have a clear focus on our shared ownership product: becoming synonymous with properties up to £400,000 and providing homes that are genuinely affordable for those struggling to get onto the property ladder.

Our ambition is more than just numbers and we remain committed to providing good quality, sustainable homes. Our aim is that all our new homes will have a minimum EPC rating of ‘C’, ensuring they are fit for the future.

In creating new homes, we recognise the important role we have in creating sustainable vibrant neighbourhoods which is why we view the regeneration of John Barker Place in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, as a key part of delivering on our corporate strategy. We have made significant progress on the project; we opened the new children’s play area in summer 2020 and started work on site to deliver much-needed new homes as planned in January 2021.

A well-run social business

Continuing to be a well-run social business remains a fundamental aspect of our strategy. This reflects three key areas of focus:

We will use our data on costs and performance to target year on year efficiencies to our cost base, with a clear focus on measuring and monitoring whether these efficiencies are realised.
We will continue to invest in our assets, ensuring that our asset management programme is fully funded within our long-term business plan. This will ensure we continue to provide good homes that reflect the needs of customers.
Social purpose is at the core of settle. We are ambitious about running our business to produce sufficient levels of surplus to ensure we balance good services and new homes with delivering that social purpose.

Underlying our approach to running the business is a strong governance framework that gives us the confidence to deliver more. This is not simply about risk management, or ensuring that our risk appetite statement underpins our approach to business activity; it is about being a regulated entity that has an effective internal control environment and the assurance that we are operating within our rules.

Delivering good services

Our approach to delivery of services will focus on the voice of the customer – ensuring that our services reflect what our customers value driven by data and engagement. We will review our approach to learning from when things go wrong so that we focus more on resolution and less on process. Key areas that we will seek to deliver in 2021/22 include:

Devise and implement a quality assurance framework for housing services, including reporting on the delivery of our Customer Promise;
Demand-led reporting and resourcing model embedded across all teams in housing to support the Neighbourhood Model;
Complete end-to-end digital repairs offer;
Design and deliver on an approach to customer engagement that drives continuous improvement, transparency and improved outcomes for residents;
Comprehensive complaints reporting to ensure we embed learning within the business.

Developing a place where colleagues love to work

During 2021/22, we will continue to deliver excellent outcomes emanating from the delivery of our People strategy. Key outcomes include:

Embed the settle way behaviour framework and redefine our expectations for our leaders;
Embed a performance management culture and implement CIH level 3 for all front line colleagues.

Our operating context

We are constantly reviewing the environment that settle is operating in and the potential changes and trends that will mature or emerge in the medium term. A summary of the key changes are:

Demonstrating that the voice of the customer is embedded into the decision-making process of the Board will be key. We will need to be able to demonstrate our compliance with new consumer regulation but more importantly we need to ensure that the way in which we engage with our customers is aligned to our values. There is no ‘one size fits all’ for communication and feedback and that engagement needs to be one of choice i.e. “as a resident I can choose how I engage with settle”.
We will continue to work with Homes England to maximise opportunities to use grant funding and support our ambition to focus on developing good quality, genuinely affordable properties.
The regulatory focus is likely to intensify around building safety, openness and transparency and demonstrable forms of customer engagement in a shift away from the approach of recent years.

Housing Associations need to continue to be on the right side of the public debate about housing and homelessness. Trust and legitimacy are likely to rise in importance for customers and regulators. settle has focussed on work locally in partnership with stakeholders to respond to homelessness issues and will continue to do this.
The economic challenges facing the country following COVID-19 have the potential to create long- term challenges to the stability of our business. We will continue to monitor the impact through our regular stress-testing of our business plan and be ready to take mitigating steps should this be appropriate.
The way in which we work has changed as a result of COVID-19. We will need to review how we maintain our strong culture in an environment where colleagues work more flexibly.
Online and digital service delivery are now ubiquitous and will create a strong demand from tenants for simpler, easier and a greater volume of digital transactions with settle.