Our business model
With over 24,000 homes across the Midlands and East of England and employing more than 1,200 people, Longhurst Group also provides care and support services at registered locations and in our customers’ homes.
Our purpose
Longhurst Group is a charitable housing association, registered as a community benefit society. It’s also registered with the Regulator of Social Housing and the Care Quality Commission.
Our purpose is to provide an integrated solution to the housing and social care crises by delivering great homes and services.
Our strategic focus is to improve the health and wellbeing and economic resilience of our customers and colleagues.
Since the launch of our Improving Lives 2025 strategy in 2019, our main focus has been on:
- Providing high-quality, affordable homes
- Ensuring our homes are safe, well-maintained and fit for the future
- Delivering high standards of customer service
- Delivering high-quality care and support services.
What we do
Turnover from social housing lettings
Social housing lettings as % of total income
Social housing lettings
Our social housing lettings business covers a range of different affordable tenure types, including social rent, immediate and affordable rent, shared ownership, sheltered and supported housing and extra care.
Development
The Group’s development programme is delivered through a mix of our own land-led development opportunities and section 106 agreements with private developers. The grant funding received from Homes England is solely for land-led developments.
Other income
Our other business activities include housing sales, which covers both shared ownership and open market property sales.
Our open market sales are mostly delivered through Keystone Developments and include a mix of family and retirement properties.
Other income is derived through floating support care contracts and managing leasehold properties for older customers.
How we do it
Our customers are at the heart of what we do
Our customers are central to everything we do, and this is evident from the work undertaken over the last year, operationally and in the Board room. Customer feedback and the customer experience are key to the Group’s governance framework, something we bolstered in 2021/22 with the appointment of the Director of Customer Experience and Communities in December 2021.
Performance
The Group has maintained its high-performing culture although we’ve faced challenges over the last 12 months, not least due to the Coronavirus pandemic and Brexit. We’re gradually starting to see the results of improvement plans that have been put in place in key areas.
Partnership working
We understand that more can be delivered through working collaboratively with partners and we continue to seek working relationships with organisations that share similar values and aims. You can find out more about the way we work with partners here.
Financial management
Our business plan undergoes rigorous reviews and stress testing to ensure that the Group remains financially robust.
Performance in this area is monitored against an agreed set of financial ‘golden rules’, which are regularly reported to the Group Board and the Finance and Treasury Committee.
Our customers
Our work doesn’t stop with providing homes for our customers. Through our Improving Lives Strategy, we seek to support people by offering our own services and by signposting them to our partners for assistance. This ensures we can support people with a wide range of care and support needs.
Our people
We currently employ over 1,200 people. During 2021, we reviewed our terms and conditions to make them more equitable for colleagues in our Care and Support and Housing teams. Learning and Development is a key part of our offer.
Our communities
More than just building homes, we build communities. Our Community Investment Team continues to provide services through a range of initiatives, such as support with employability and training, access to funding that helps people in crisis or those needing a little extra money to improve their garden.
Our partners and investors
Working with others allows us to deliver more than we can on our own. Our extensive development programme is a great example of what we can achieve with partners, enabling us to raise capital through long-term debt capital funding and shorter-term revolving credit facilities.
© 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.