Abri, one of the south of England’s largest housing providers, today announced its performance highlights for 2022-2023 with its focus being on supporting its customers, investing in existing homes,, and developing new affordable housing.
On Abri’s performance, Gary Orr, Group Chief Executive said:
“Abri is halfway through its Corporate Strategy 2020-2025 and our operating environment is very different to the one in 2020 in which Abri’s journey began. Our customers are facing significant cost of living challenges so our focus this year has been, and continues to be, supporting our customers to sustain their tenancies as well as investing in our homes and services.”
The group has committed to invest £435 million over the next ten years to maintain the quality of its existing homes. This includes improving building and fire safety, tackling issues like damp and mould and making our homes more energy efficient.
To support its customers to live in comfortable homes, help reduce energy bills, and reach net-zero commitments, Abri aims to make all its homes reach a minimum of EPC Band C by 2030. In the last financial year, the group retrofitted 125 homes with 31 receiving support from Wave 1 of the Social Housing Decarbonisation Funding. Abri is preparing to start work on a further 400 homes in 2023. To support this, Abri received further funding through a successful joint bid for Wave 2 funding as part of the Greener Futures Partnership. The Partnership was allocated £40.4 million by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero which will help the group retrofit 5,600 homes.
Abri has invested £4.39 million in cost of living support this year including a dedicated Tenancy Support Service helping customers access benefits, maximise their income and support households with essential items. In its communities, Abri has issued funding to support community pantries across its geography to provide low cost, healthy food; tackling food inequality through the Good Grub Club; and projects offering free weekly activities and clothes swaps.
Despite a challenging economic backdrop Abri continues to remain strong and resilient, having retained its G1/V1 rating from the Regulator of Social Housing in November 2022 and A3 Moody’s credit rating in February 2023. This will enable Abri to continue to support its customers, invest in its homes and deliver more much needed affordable housing.
On the delivery of more homes, Gary Orr said:
“As well as investing in our existing homes and supporting our customers, increasing the supply of quality affordable housing across our region has never been more important. We’ve made positive achievements towards this in the last year, delivering 1,018 new homes. Through the Affordable Homes Programme 2021-2026, as a strategic partner for Homes England, we’ve drawn down 64% of our £250 million grant funding and continued to work in partnership through our joint ventures to build more homes. We have however had to say goodbye to our colleagues in Help to Buy this year as the Government scheme comes to an end. I want to thank all these colleagues who have helped our customers realise their dream of owning a home.”
Abri believes that delivering quality homes and services for its customers cannot be done without an empowered and engaged workforce. “We exist to serve our customers, and during the last year have invested heavily in our colleagues and operations to empower them to deliver better services for our customers” says Gary.
“We launched our Customers First strategy in May 2022, setting out our plans to develop housing services that reflect what our customers are telling us, ensure customers continue to be heard and involved in decision making, and to place our customer-facing colleagues in the centre of our organisation. We made significant progress on making this a reality over the last year. We aligned our policies, processes and teams across the organisation to create a consistent service offer for customers no matter where they live. This was supported by one set of systems, enabling our colleagues to be on the ground, in our communities and more accessible to our customers. We’ve also brought more of our services in-house to ensure we can have better control over the quality of services we provide and invested in colleague development to create Housing Professionals of the Future.
“I’m pleased with all that we’ve achieved in the last financial year although we still have some way to go. As we look ahead to the new year and second half of our corporate strategy’s lifespan, Abri’s priority remains on providing high quality homes and services for our customers. We will ensure we are even more visible and accountable to our customers in our local areas and better understand and support the unique needs, issues and opportunities our communities face.”