Annual Report 2021/22
Welcome to the 2021/22 Annual Report to you, our tenants. We are pleased to share highlights of how we have continued to evolve support and services in the post-covid challenging environment and how we have performed in a year of recovery.
Chief Executive
This year saw us deliver the second phase of our business strategy, Plan A 2019-2022. This provided us with a clear strategic path to maintain continuous improvement and focus on key performance targets whilst dealing with any post-covid backlogs of work and continuing to deliver much needed support with cost of living.
Over the last 12 months we also re-directed financial resources and capacity so we could invest in the quality and energy efficiency of our homes and increasing the number of new, quality homes in sustainable and thriving places.
It has been a year of great change across the social housing sector. We have adapted to emerging changes to the regulatory Consumer Standards that were introduced through the Charter for Social Housing Residents, ensuring that all tenants are treated fairly, with respect and have their voices heard. We have also seen the introduction of new Tenant Satisfaction Measures, some of which are contained in this report, which will be used to best understand how tenants view our performance. These areas are still developing, and we will be proactively adapting as any new requirements emerge.
The publication of the Government’s Levelling Up White Paper started a shift in focus for the housing sector, with greater emphasis than ever before on creating places where people are proud to live, through regeneration, creating new homes and community development. This is a developing area which we will be watching closely and aligning our strategy as further details emerge. In the meantime, we continue to invest in improving homes and estates in our local communities and during the past year we made great progress at Jubilee Fields, Shildon.
2021/22 also saw the introduction of our Sustainability Strategy, Planet A (as there is no Planet B). Tenants had told us that this is a priority and we responded by accelerating our activity to improve the energy efficiency of our existing homes, building more energy efficient new homes and reducing the carbon footprint of our homes, as we strive towards Net Zero by 2050. We also declared a climate emergency and were co-signatories to the County Durham Climate Pledge which encourages key partners across the County to work together to support environmental sustainability initiatives and reduce carbon consumption.
Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to you, our tenants, for the work that you do to help us improve our services. This year, through the various engagement opportunities, we were able to implement 56 meaningful service improvements in response to your feedback and suggestions, a snapshot of which are included in this report.
I hope you enjoy reading this report. We look forward to continuing to work with you over the coming year.
We will give you information on our performance targets across our most important service areas. More local offers.
