East Thames Annual Report and Financial Statements 2015/16
Message from the Group Chairman, Tina Tietjen However, as talks progress it is important that East Thames does not lose sight of our core business goals. Despite the significant performance improvements made in the past 12 months, we know that there are still areas which require more work: satisfaction with East Thames as a landlord is improving, but we’re not on target yet, and our customer’s satisfaction with their most recent repair is still not good enough.
2015/16 saw East Thames making several significant achievements. As well as stabilising our financial performance we have made major advances in our quest to provide top quartile customer service, notably increasing the speed of our repairs service and improving complaints satisfaction. Our good practice has also been recognised through several national awards, including a UK Housing Award for Beverley Lewis House women’s refuge and two First Time Buyer Readers’ Awards for our Mayfield development in Waltham Forest, and for our latest shared ownership marketing campaign. It is this success that has enabled us to consider a bigger and better future for East Thames. At the time of writing we are in merger talks with one of the largest players in the London housing sector: L&Q. The merger will result in East Thames being part of one of the largest housing associations in the south east, and one of the UK’s top housebuilders, but it will also mean that we will ensure the delivery of our mission for years to come: to make a positive and lasting contribution to the neighbourhoods in which we work. East Thames has a strong, proud history of developing homes and services in east London and Essex. 6-7
We believe we can deliver much more for our customers by working in partnership. Together we want to build 100,000 new homes in the next ten years, with 50% of these being truly affordable for those on low or average incomes. Both organisations are committed to supporting their local communities and want to deliver more homes and services. However it is testament to East Thames’ record for social and economic regeneration that, in a merged body, we will chair a joint community foundation investing into local projects, with a focus on resident education, training and employment. The new organisation will also create a new training academy to provide nationally accredited apprenticeship schemes, greater career development opportunities for staff and training and employment options for residents in the communities we serve. Finally, through East Thames’ expertise we will create a large care and support subsidiary, taking in supported housing from both partners. This will include a new offer for vulnerable and older people which will cater for London’s ageing population.
In addition to these challenges we must continue to evolve to accommodate the demands of new government policy. 2016 will see changes to housing benefit come into effect; these will make it harder than ever for our social tenants to pay their rent. We will aspire to provide them with as much support as possible through our welfare benefits advice service. We have also decided that we will voluntarily offer eligible tenants the Right to Buy – this will allow us to keep more control of our portfolio, whilst still offering many of our long-term residents the chance to realise their dream of home ownership. By December 2016 our merger talks will be complete and we will be able to announce full details of the new organisation, which I will be helping to shape as a member of its group board. However as we go forward our focus will remain firmly on providing an uninterrupted, and top quartile performance for existing East Thames residents.