Creating communities, empowering lives
We believe home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling.
Home is feeling safe, feeling secure, feeling happy. It’s a refuge. It’s where you feel you belong - where you’re part of a community. It’s a place where you can dream big, achieve your goals and be who you want to be.
But not everyone is fortunate enough to have a home. Homelessness, poverty, and inequality are challenges people face every day. Finding ways to solve these challenges drives us.
How do we do this?
We believe local people know what's best for them and their community.
No one likes to be told what’s right for them. Because it’s not helpful. Different people have different needs. And our customers are no different. We’re strong believers in the fact that people usually know what’s best for them and their community.
That’s why we work with the community. When people living in an area take a leading role in creating change, great things can happen.
It’s not just about building homes. It’s about building great communities. Where people want to live.
Between 2020-2025 we’re investing £15m in our communities to drive change and transform these areas.
We’ve done the research
We asked what people needed. So we’re focusing on three key areas:
- Community empowerment
- Employment
- Health and wellbeing
We take the lead from those who know first-hand what they, their families and their neighbours need to succeed. That’s why customer involvement is key to how we shape our community investment plans.
We’ve identified key communities
There are some big issues we want to help tackle. They affect some communities more than others. So we don’t want to spread ourselves too thinly, because that’s not helpful to anyone.
Instead, through our research, we’ve found key communities that’ll benefit most from our support. We’re working with each community on an individual basis. It’s not about telling people what we think is right, it’s about listening to communities to help them create positive change.
£15m investment in communities
We’re aiming to:
- Transform at least eight community investment zones with targeted and well-supported activity.
- Create new pathways into training, employment and careers. We want to give thousands of people new opportunities to take back financial control of their lives.
- Deliver both major employer partnerships and significant additional funding into our community investment fund.
We want people to love where they live. But we also want them to receive the support they need to succeed.
Don't just hear it from us
Read our case studiesOur Community Investment Plans
We’ve created Community Investment Plans that share how we will work with our communities and local organisations to make things better.
They were created after talking to our residents, communities and local organisations to find out how they feel about where they live.
And they cover the three strategic focus areas in our Community Investment Strategy – employment, health and wellbeing, and community empowerment.
If you have any questions, get in touch with our Community Development Officers.
Working together to achieve more
We believe that by working collaboratively on projects and initiatives with other organisations, we truly create opportunities for our customers and communities.
Our partners
Partnership working is key to creating communities and empowering lives. By working with partners to deliver projects and initiatives we can combine our knowledge and expertise to help communities to thrive. From health and wellbeing schemes to training opportunities – and everything in between – by working together we can create more life-chances for more people.
We work with different organisations on both a short and long-term basis. If you or your organisation has an idea for a project or initiative that will make a difference to the lives of our customers, don’t hesitate to contact us to discuss this further and see how we can help develop ideas in to workable models.
