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Group Strategy

2025-28

Creating a better future together.

Foreword

Our starting point

Over the past two years, we’ve successfully brought two organisations together, which is a signiﬁcant undertaking. With no more mergers on the horizon, we’re looking forward to a period of stability ahead.

We do face increasing demands on us. Stronger regulation and rightfully higher resident expectations requires us to be more efficient and effective. We do so much great work, but residents have been clear about where we need to make improvements – we’ve heard that message clearly.

Our colleagues have shared valuable feedback and ideas for how to do this through our Better Together programme, which is focused on making things simpler, safer and smarter. We’ve begun putting these ideas into action, but we know people still need teams to work more seamlessly together and need better tools to serve residents effectively.

Whilst there’s lots we need to do, the current economic climate presents challenges. Like everyone, we’ve been managing high inﬂation and interest rates, amidst rising costs and wider economic uncertainty. Whilst these pressures affect us all, they disproportionately impact many Peabody residents and we remain committed to supporting people when they need it most.

Every day, we spend over £1million maintaining and improving homes. There is, however, increasing demands on our resources. New safety regulations, whilst vital, have meant implementing new safety protocols that stretch our resources further. Meanwhile, we’ve been adapting to increased scrutiny and navigating a shifting policy landscape. At times, this has created uncertainty in our operating environment. We continue to advocate for a more stable environment so we can focus on what matters most – serving our residents well.

Looking ahead

This strategy sets out our plan for the next three years and is focused squarely on improvement. Better services for residents, better together for colleagues, and better homes and places for the long-term.

We have important work planned to make these goals happen. Over the next three years, residents will see our services become more reliable – with fewer issues, quicker ﬁxes, and clearer communication. All of this will help build trust between Peabody and the communities we serve.

Year one is about laying the foundations for longerterm improvements. Repairs remain our top priority as we continue with our new local repairs service and work to improve the entire experience. We’re creating clear service standards, so residents know what to expect from us, and we’re making our communications better across the board. We’ll also make service charge bills clearer and more transparent – something we know is especially important for homeowners.

We’re investing in better tools and training to make it easier for colleagues to do their job with ease and conﬁdence. This includes a new management development programme, as well as a major upgrade of our equipment, technology and systems. We’ll keep supporting and empowering colleagues to make things simpler, safer and smarter.

In the coming years, we will continue to prioritise investment into our buildings to make sure they remain safe and comfortable places to live. We’ve brought together our Development and Property Services and Assets team into one new Investment Directorate. This helps us take a joined-up approach to looking after our homes – both existing ones and those we’re building. This year, we’ll create the Peabody 200: asset investment strategy. This will be an important long-term plan that ensures our investment decisions are well-balanced and focused on the continuous improvement of our homes, buildings, and other communal spaces between now and our 200th anniversary in 2062.

To achieve all our aims, we need to think big while acting locally. We’ll be working to integrate a local approach into every aspect of Peabody – making it a fundamental principle that guides our planning and operations. We’ll be testing innovative ways to do this through local place-pilots that will help discover new ways of working effectively at a local level.

This document outlines our purpose, mission, vision for local working, and our key priorities for the next three years. Driven by our charitable purpose and building on over 160 years of service, we’re conﬁdent that by working together, we can continue to deliver on our mission for generations to come.

We know the path ahead will require careful decisions and persistent effort, but we’re committed to making meaningful improvements that residents will beneﬁt from over the course of this strategy.

About Peabody. What drives us.

“ We’re here to provide quality homes, work with communities to strengthen neighbourhoods, and support people when they need it most.”

Purpose

Few things are more important to someone than their home. It’s their refuge, the foundation for health and happiness.

Founded in 1862 by George Peabody to help Londoners in need, we’ve been providing safe, secure and comfortable homes for over 160 years.

We draw our inspiration from the thousands of families who’ve built their lives in our communities over the years. That’s why we’re committed to providing quality homes that don’t just serve people well today, but will stand strong for many generations to come.

Mission

We’re here to provide quality homes, work with communities to strengthen neighbourhoods, and support people when they need it most.

We look after 108,000 homes across London and the home counties, plus the community centres, play areas, and green spaces that bring these areas to life. Our job is to keep these places well-maintained and provide reliable landlord services.

We serve more than 220,000 people who live in these homes. They’re a mix of renters and homeowners, with another 26,000 people who receive our care services. We believe in building strong, trusting and respectful relationships with everyone in the Peabody community. That’s why we value the feedback and experiences residents share with us, using that to directly inﬂuence how we work.

Every day committed residents are creating positive changes in their neighbourhoods. We’re proud to work side by side with tenant groups and local organisations to help create stronger communities together.

When life gets challenging – whether it’s keeping up with bills, managing debt, or ﬁnding work – we’re here to help ﬁnd solutions. Often, we connect with other services to make sure people get the right support when they need it most.

Spotlight on: The Peabody Community Foundation

Our Community Foundation sits at the heart of our social purpose. We’re focused on making a real difference in our communities with a clear vision: helping residents become healthier, wealthier and happier. Our programmes and projects bring people together to co-create solutions that respond to some of society’s toughest challenges – from child poverty to homelessness; underemployment to violence affecting young people. We’ll continue delivering programmes that channel our investment, skills and resources directly into our communities where they are needed most.

Spotlight on: Care and Support Services

Beyond our role as a landlord, we provide specialist homes and care and support services that help over 26,000 vulnerable people live their best lives. Through carefully designed homes and personalised support, we help people achieve independence, stability, wellbeing and happiness in their everyday lives.

How we’ll achieve it. Act local, think place.

Local Peabody is a mindset to guide how we work across the organisation. It’s the tool we need to really deliver on our mission.

When Catalyst and Peabody joined together, we made a commitment to get closer to residents through taking a local approach. We’ve already made signiﬁcant strides towards this with our regional structure, smaller neighbourhood patches and localised repairs service. These changes have improved teamwork and strengthened relationships.

We remain committed to this way of working. Being local means more than being based nearby – it’s about creating relationships and connections that help us better serve the communities we work in.

The vision we’re working towards is where:

• We run things locally: Decisions are tailored to each area, based on a deep understanding of that place and its unique needs.

• Accessible staff: Residents can easily ﬁnd approachable, knowledgeable staff nearby to where they live. There are dedicated local teams who know each neighbourhood well.

• Teams work as one: Our teams pull together with shared goals, clear responsibilities, and a collaborative spirit that puts the neighbourhood ﬁrst.

• Community partnership: We work with residents to improve the neighbourhood, investing wisely to make the biggest difference to the people who live there.

• Proactive management: Being closely connected to the neighbourhood means we can better prevent issues before they arise and respond quickly when issues do come up.

Being local means thinking about the whole place.

Every neighbourhood has its own distinct personality. Yet all places work better when each elementhomes, buildings, public spaces, services, community and culture - works in harmony. A place-based approach goes beyond simply managing properties. It’s about making the most of these connections.

In many places, we’re responsible for parts of the environment beyond the housing. To be genuinely local, we need to consider the whole place and develop a complete picture of each community. This allows us to move away from a one-size-ﬁts-all approach and recognises that every place has different strengths and needs.

Under this approach, we need to work beyond departmental and even organisational boundaries. With limited resources, we need to work collectively with other stakeholders and think creatively about how we make the most impact. Collaborating with residents and partners to develop new solutions for their neighbourhoods is essential.

We aim to create:

Sustainable, healthy places

Comfortable homes

Well-kept buildings

Safe and welcoming public spaces

Easy

to access services

Strong community

Vibrant culture

How will we get there?

While fully achieving this vision may extend beyond this strategy’s timeframe, we’re starting right away.

This vision and approach will shape all our improvement work over the next three years. This year, we’ll also launch a new pilot programme to research and develop different ways of working local. This will serve as a testing ground for operational improvements and help us explore how we can purposefully design our services to be more responsive to local needs.

Spotlight on: Thamesmead

Our work in Thamesmead, where we own two-thirds of the town, including more than 5,600 homes, is a blueprint for our whole place approach. We’ve been working with communities and partners since we launched our Plan for Thamesmead in 2018 to improve, grow and look after the town for the longterm. We split our work into ﬁve themes: town management, inclusive growth and regeneration, improving the landscape, making space for culture, and supporting communities to thrive.

We’re now looking at how we can apply the same principles to help us strengthen and create sustainable neighbourhoods and places elsewhere.

Our strategy to 2028.

1. 2. 3.

Three strategic priorities

Over the next three years, we’ll prioritise the following areas of work:

Better services for residents.

Better together for colleagues.

Better homes and places for the long-term.

All of this is underpinned by our continued focus on ﬁnancial resilience in everything we do.

Better services 1.

Aims

We’re committed to improving our services to create simpler, better experiences for residents. Our local approach will help, by enabling teams to be more responsive and collaborative where it matters most.

Whilst acting with urgency, we’ll carefully balance speed with quality design and implementation of the changes needed to make that happen. We’ll make sure we understand the root causes of why our services sometimes fall short of expectations, listening carefully to the feedback and experiences of residents and using that to purposefully design service improvements.

The result will be improved service quality and response times for residents and more efficient ways of working for our teams.

Objectives

To deliver Better Services, we’ve set ﬁve shared objectives:

1. Minimise service failures. Remove the demand created by failures or mistakes that can be avoided. Wherever possible, ﬁx residents’ issues on the ﬁrst attempt. Guarantee prompt completion of remaining issues within established timeframes.

2. Establish clear and accessible service standards. Be more reliable through setting clear expectations on quality and timelines.

3. Communicate better. Be clear, friendly and consistent. Actively listen to feedback and respond promptly.

4. Deepen our understanding of residents’ needs. Gather and analyse information on needs and preferences. Use this to tailor and improve services.

5. Pilot new ways of working and design user friendly services. Co-create innovative solutions with residents and colleagues.

Measurable outcomes

We’re focused on improving the resident experience by ﬁxing things quickly, solving problems faster, and making every interaction with us a positive one that builds trust. There will be many detailed metrics we’ll be tracking to measure these improvements, but the four headline measures we aim to see improving are:

Improved satisfaction: While we recognise that changing perceptions takes time, our aim is that these improvements will contribute to a signiﬁcant rise in overall satisfaction for renters and homeowners. We’re targeting a 7% increase.

Better repairs: We’ll complete repair requests promptly and efficiently, with a 19% increase in repairs completed in target and a 5% rise in satisfaction scores.

Better communication: We’ll keep residents better informed and use the feedback we get actively. We’re targeting a 10% improvement in feedback scores about our responsiveness and whether we listen to residents’ views and act upon them.

Fewer complaints: As trust builds and service quality improves, we expect to see a 10% reduction in the number of complaints.

Better services for residents.

Where are we now?

We have work to do. Our Tenant Satisfaction Measures are not where we want them to be and the c.50% increase in complaints over the last year shows us speciﬁc areas where we need to improve:

Repairs need attention - we need to keep appointments more reliably and follow up properly after the work is completed.

Neighbourhood issues matter - residents are concerned about antisocial behaviour and the general upkeep of their neighbourhoods.

Transparency on service charges - questions about rent and service charges are increasing, with homeowners raising more concerns about leases and managing agents. We need to challenge costs from our contractors to ensure costs passed on to residents in their service charge represent value for money.

Communication needs improvement - residents tell us that reporting problems can be frustrating with long wait times and inconsistent updates. Residents want to know more about their local contacts and when they’ll be around in the area.

Giving feedback should be easier - it needs to be simpler for residents to share their thoughts and make complaints where needed.

We’ve made some positive steps, but it’s clear we’re not meeting expectations. Making meaningful improvements to how we work is essential for providing better services.

What will we do in the ﬁrst year?

In year one, we will lay the foundations for long-term improvements across our services, whilst making sure there’s visible progress from the start. Alongside continuously improving our day-to-day work, we’re prioritising the following initiatives:

• Repairs service: We’re strengthening our local Repairs Service, with additional staff to support the introduction of Awaab’s Law and boost overall capacity. We’ll improve contractor relationships, making sure we’re recovering costs for service failures, and launch a ‘repair resident journey’ programme to understand and enhance the resident experience from start to ﬁnish. These improvements aim to reduce the cost of failure and reduce complaints, meaning we can reinvest savings back in our services.

• Service standards: We’ll co-design clear, measurable Service Standards with residents and colleagues. This will cover key services, like repairs and estates services, alongside internal support services and communications. These will be publicly available, which means we can track performance with residents and use this to drive continuous improvements.

• Homeowner services: We’re launching a dedicated improvement programme, which will start with a review and reﬁnement of management fee calculations, the processes around ﬁxed service charges, and billing for commercial leases. We’ll also undertake a careful assessment of sinking funds, continue our proactive management of major works billing, and evaluate our management systems so we can better serve homeowners.

• Communications: Our Better Communication project aims to make sure we provide residents with information that’s clear, consistent and easy to understand. Early discovery work has helped us understand what residents currently experience and explore the ways we can improve our processes to make it easier for colleagues to provide this. We’ll use this insight to create a targeted improvement programme.

• Complaints management: We’ll continue to improve how we manage complaints, using insights from the Housing Ombudsman to improve resident experience. A new triage system will mean residents get help faster and fewer issues need to be escalated.

Complaints data will help identify service failures and will be used to drive improvements.

• Resident engagement: We’re strengthening residents’ voices across all levels of our organisation to drive meaningful change. We’ll continue to support a diverse range of ways to involve residents in our work. This includes resident Board roles and strategic panels like the Resident Led Panel, to supporting local Tenant and Resident Associations and Regional Forums, alongside speciﬁc focus groups, surveys and consultations. We’ll be transparent and open, valuing the scrutiny this provides and welcoming new ideas to ensure residents’ perspectives inﬂuence decisions.

• Care and support: We’ll strengthen our care and support services through strength-based and trauma informed approaches, improving our ways of working to help achieve this and delivering engagement activities that increase customer inﬂuence.

• Local, place-based innovation: We’ll continue to embed and learn from successful local programmes, such as our place-based community investment model and the co-production culture model in Thamesmead. We’ll also deepen local impact by rolling out neighbourhood plans and continue to provide local community services, such as safe and inclusive community centres and our economic inclusion offer. We’ll launch a new place-based pilot, using all this learning to create a roadmap for the next phase on this path.

Better together for colleagues. 2.

Aims

Success depends on the dedication and hard work of our 4,000 colleagues. We’re committed to making it easier and more enjoyable for everyone to do their job with conﬁdence.

To build this high-performance culture, we’ll make sure we give our teams the tools they need to excel. We’ll continue empowering colleagues to make our ways of working simpler, safer and smarter – because when our colleagues can do their best work, residents get a better service.