Opening statements
Having navigated the Coronavirus pandemic, we’re now steadily emerging from another challenging 12 months that have seen us make strong progress towards our Improving Lives Strategy, but also a drop off in performance in a couple of really important areas.
Moving forward
As you’ll see throughout this report, there are many things we can be proud of as we continue to live our values, deliver our strategic aims and double down on our purpose to be part of the solution to the housing and social care crises.
With consistently strong performance in keys areas such as income recovery, development and sales, as well as our community investment activity and the overall care and support we provide to our customers, we have plenty of reasons to take pride in the last 12 months.
We can also look forward, with optimism, to the year ahead as we innovate and work more closely with our customers to improve in the areas we need to.
We’ve been working extremely hard this year to clear a substantial number of outstanding repairs that built up during the pandemic while moving quickly to reshape the way we listen and respond to our customers.
Our overall operating margin remains consistent, but operating margin on social housing lettings is below the targets we’ve set.
This is due to increased management costs and the challenges we’ve faced with our repairs contract, but we’re taking steps to address these concerns, as you’ll see throughout this report.
The issues we’ve faced have been accentuated by ongoing difficulties with sourcing labour and materials as we feel the full impact of Brexit and other external market factors that have affected our business and the wider UK economy.
We also need to resolve complaints more quickly, building on the improvements we’ve made in the last 12 months.
By taking on board customer feedback, showing greater transparency about how we’re performing and embracing a customer first culture, we’re determined to collaborate with our customers to improve the services they receive and drive efficiency.
This includes the introduction of a dedicated Complaints Team, setting up a dedicated in-house contact centre for customers to report repairs and the introduction of our new Improving Lives Forum, which comprises members of our Board and our Customer Forum.
We hope that these changes, as well as improvements to our repairs service will help us enhance customer satisfaction. Although this has slightly increased during the year, there remains further room for improvement.
We’re confident that the work we’ve done to address these challenges leaves us well-placed to enhance our performance, improve customer experience and satisfaction and, ultimately, keep us on track to realise the aims of our Improving Lives ambitions.
With three new regional repairs contractors in place, as well as dedicated call centres and a laser-like focus on performance, efficiency and innovation, we believe we’ve laid the foundations for real improvement.
Continuing to embrace a more agile, digital-first approach to work, our colleagues are well-placed to overcome the challenges we’ve faced and to provide the best possible service to our customers.
Useful links
© Longhurst Group Limited
Longhurst Group Ltd is a charitable housing association registered in England as a community benefit society (Reg. No. 8009) and registered with the Regulator of Social Housing (No. L4277).
Registered Office: 1 Crown Court, Crown Way, Rushden, Northamptonshire NN10 6BS. VAT Reg No. 326 0270 36. A member of the National Housing Federation.