Annual Report 2018-19
Providing a strong foundation for life
Providing a strong foundation for life This report is for customers and stakeholders and it is important that it contains clear information that is relevant to you. We know from wider customer feedback that an easy to understand, open and transparent report is important. As well as the facts and figures, customers want to see more of what we have accomplished over the past 12 months through the use of small case studies. Going forwards, we will work with the Tenants Scrutiny Panel to develop this report further, and make sure it reflects what our customers want to know. We hope you find it useful and would welcome any comments.
York Housing Association has been operating in the beautiful and historic City of York for 55 years, and working with our Parent Company, Karbon Homes, our area of operation now stretches into East Riding, Scarborough, Ryedale, Hambleton, Harrogate, Leeds, and Selby. The customers and communities we serve within these areas have many different needs and aspirations. We work hard to understand what our customers want from us, so we can build more homes and deliver more services of the right kind, in the right places. We provide socially rented, affordable, and specialised supported homes; and also provide opportunities for low cost home ownership through Rent to Buy and Shared Ownership. As a ‘profit-for-apurpose’ business, we invest any surplus we generate into improving our homes and communities, building new homes, and delivering services.
Page 3
Foreword by the Chair
Page 4
Providing as many good quality homes as we can
Page 5
Delivering an excellent customer experience
Page 6 & 7
Shaping strong and sustainable places
Page 8
Growth and financial strength
Page 9
Sound Governance and risk management
Page 10 & 11 Performance 2018/19
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Foreword
By the outgoing Chair Janet Whipps
It is with great delight that I present this York Housing Association Annual Report for 2018/19. This was my last year as Chair of the Association, having been a member of the Board since 2011. In accordance with good Governance practice, I have now reached the end of my term of office, and so as it is time, I handed over the reins to the Association’s new Chair, Steve Secker in May 2019. However, my final year has been one I am very proud of, particularly as we have started to see the fruits of our decision to join the larger Karbon Homes Group coming to fruition. Our new shared Mission: Providing a Strong Foundation for Life, sets out our ambition to provide, maintain and build homes for a wide range of customers, and ensure that our secure homes and excellent services support our customers to fulfil their ambitions in life. In the next five years we will build stronger foundations for even more people, by delivering on our three strategic aims:
To provide as many good quality Homes as we can
To deliver excellent service to our customers
To shape strong sustainable places for our communities
York Housing Association is a charitable registered society and is regulated by the Regulator of Social Housing. I hope you will enjoy reading about how we have tried to deliver on these aims over the last year. As I step back from the organisation I was eager to take the opportunity to look both backwards and forwards in the recent life of York Housing Association, and leave some final reflections.
Firstly, I would like to acknowledge the important contribution of my predecessor, Kevin McAleese CBE, who was Chair of York Housing Association from 2014 to 2016. Kevin brought a lot of experience and understanding to YHA but stepped down from the role following a terminal Cancer diagnosis and sadly passed away in March this year. I know he would be delighted to see the positive work of the Association continuing. In stepping down from the role of Chair, I am particularly proud of the contribution I was able to make in leading the organisation through the sometimes difficult process of deciding to merge with a larger organisation and then choosing an appropriate partner. We have all been delighted with the decision we made and the way that everyone at Karbon has welcomed us in the true spirit of partnership. I am particularly pleased with the way we have been able to bring forward an increased development pipeline, so we can make a significant contribution to meeting the need for good quality affordable homes in our area. I would also like to welcome my successor, Steve Secker to the role of Chair. He brings a wealth of relevant experience and I am confident he will provide excellent leadership to the Association going forward.
By the incoming Chair Steve Secker I am honoured & privileged to have been selected to chair York Housing Association. I am indebted to the work of my predecessors and particularly Janet in guiding York HA to the strong position that I join it. I thank all of the team at York and Karbon for making me feel so welcome and helping me through my induction. We have a great Board and Executive leadership at York who it is a pleasure to work with. I’m looking forward to the challenge of working with Julia Histon and her team to help continue the great work that York Housing Association does ‘Providing a strong Foundation for Life’. The Karbon merger has helped provide more opportunities for York to grow its own homes and manage more for Karbon so this next chapter should see us doing more to provide much needed affordable housing in the area in which we operate.
So my final reflections are that York Housing Association is in a good place, in what have been uncertain economic and political times over the last 8 years I have been involved. This Annual Report includes the financial statements which show a turnover of £6,115m, with an operating surplus of £1.288m, and reserves of £9,980m. Operational performance remains good, with the majority of performance areas exceeding the targets set by the Board. 87% of our tenants tell us that they are satisfied with the services that we provide. I would therefore like to thank all the staff and Board at York Housing Association for their hard work, creativity and commitment over the last year, none of this would have been possible without them and particularly the exceptional leadership of Julia, the Managing Director. I will miss the cut and thrust of Board meetings and wish them, the Association and its customers all the very best for the future.
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Providing as many good quality homes as we can
Ms Emma Halliwell and her sons Kye and Harvey have been delighted to move into a new 2 bed home in Carlton, Selby. Emma is an estate champion and been part of the interveiw panel for our Gas Contract renewal One of the main drivers for joining the Karbon Homes group was that it provided the opportunity to build on our ambition to deliver an increasing number of new homes. Karbon Homes is committed to developing in YHA areas of operation, meaning that we can invest the income from managing these properties into new provision and existing homes. Its particularly pleasing because when we consulted our existing tenants on our plans to join Karbon they told us that providing new homes for future generations whilst still looking after their homes was a top priority for them. Our previous strategy was to build a minimum of 20 homes per year and since joining Karbon we have already been able to revise this up to around 30 going forward, with further ambition to increase this wherever possible. During 2018/19 we completed our development of 6 shared ownership and 6 rented homes on the rural site at Sheriff Hutton in Ryedale and 4 shared ownership and 4 rented homes at Carlton Green in Selby, bringing the total number of new homes for the year to 20. We were also fortunate to secure an early opportunity to manage some new homes
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on behalf of Karbon when the purchase of 15 Rent to Buy properties in Selby and East Riding was completed towards the year end. We have jointly stepped up the development programme significantly with more new homes in the pipeline in the East Riding, Ryedale, Selby, York and Harrogate, along with further possibilities that include parts of West Yorkshire and Hambleton. This increased development activity is being brought forward by our new Development Manager, Phil Lacey, based at our office in York. Phil comes with a wealth of experience, delivering a range of mixed tenure grant funded projects including general needs, supported housing and shared ownership. Since starting in post Phil has secured several sites across Yorkshire which will deliver over 400 homes for Karbon and YHA over the next 3 years.
Phil Lacey, Development Manager, outside one of the many new homes being provided in our region.
Delivering an Excellent Customer Experience
Customer Service
Key facts;
Following an independant assessment in June 2018 we were pleased to receive the news that we had retained Customer Service Excellence accreditation. This is a great testament to our dedicated team of staff.
87% of tenants are happy
Average number of calls to the main YHA number: 1123 per month (13476 per annum)
83% of tenants are satisfied with the quality of their home
87% of tenants think their rent represents value for money
Average speed of calls answering:
11 seconds
62% of tenants think their
Percentage of calls answered:
service charge represents value for money
95.89%
83% of tenants are satisfied
Percentage of calls abandoned (customer rang off):
4.1%
with the repairs and maintenance service
Average number of visitors to YHA office:
73% of tenants are satisfied
1791 per annum (149.25 per month) Average number of resident log-ins to our on-line customer (self- service) portal :
62 pcm
Moving forward, we may need to look at capturing a wider data-set
Seeking customer views Towards the end of 2018 we carried out our full Tenant Satisfaction Survey. The survey asks tenants to rate our performance across a range of areas including overall satisfaction with YHA services, quality of homes, value for money for rent and service charges, the repairs service and communication. The area where we achieved the highest improvement since the last survey was ‘listening to views and acting on them’ where we saw a 10% increase in satisfaction.
with the services provided by YHA
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with how we listen to views and act on them
For this survey we also introduced a Net Promoter Score which is a measure of how many tenants would recommend YHA as a landlord to others. Our net promoter score was 45, which is higher than average when compared with other landlords. Over the coming months we will be focussing our efforts on improving weaker areas of performance and increasing satisfaction with service charges has been identified as a high priority. We will be working with our Tenant Scrutiny Panel to improve services in this area. We also plan to carry out more regular quarterly ‘pulse’ surveys providing the opportunity to respond much more quickly if there is a decline in satisfaction in a particular service area.
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Shaping strong and sustainable places Scrutinising our services The Tenant Scrutiny Panel continues to work hard for the benefit of all tenants and this year they examined how we deliver the Planned Improvements service. Their work focussed on how we consult with and offer choices to tenants when carrying out works such as kitchen and bathroom replacements and how we oversee the works and ensure a quality outcome. The maintenance team has welcomed the feedback and recommendations and has been busy implementing them in time for the start of work on the coming year’s programme.
Complaints During the year we received a total of 20 complaints. All of these were resolved at stage 1, with no referrals to the Housing Ombudsman. The nature of complaints were; 1 regarding the ASB service 3 regarding customer service
As well as managing new homes on behalf of Karbon, we continue our partnership to manage properties on behalf of Teesside based Thirteen Group in York.
Key facts; New Homes Completed Homes managed on behalf of Karbon
15
New YHA Homes
20
YHA For Rent
10
YHA Shared ownership
10
12 regarding responsive maintenance 2 regarding planned improvements 2 regarding the gardening service The learning from these complaints was the need to improve communication across all of the areas and to ensure that a common-sense approach is taken when interpreting policies and procedures to ensure that customers’ individual needs are taken account of when making decisions. We also received 8 compliments covering customer service, the repairs service and support for vulnerable customers.
Investing in existing homes We are strongly committed to ensuring that all of our existing homes are maintained to a high standard. Last year we invested in excess of £600,000 in our planned maintenance programme, making sure that our existing tenants had secure, safe and comfortable homes.
Key facts; Over £600,000 of investment in existing homes New Bathrooms fitted
New Boilers/heating systems
New Kitchens fitted
New Roofs
Electrical upgrades
New external doors
60
49
12 30
5 106
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Health and Safety The health and safety of our tenants is of utmost priority and during the year we invested £330,513 ensuring that all properties were fully compliant with all legislation and best practice. This work included gas servicing, electrical testing, fire risk assessments, fire alarm testing, legionella testing and asbestos surveys. Compliance is a key area of focus for our Board members who regularly review our performance across all of these areas. To provide the required level of assurance we have strengthened our policies, processes and reporting arrangements, particularly since the awful tragedy of the Grenfell Tower fire in London.
Delivering the repairs service During the year we re-tendered the responsive repairs service and appointed Palm Yorkshire as our sole contractor providing a responsive repairs and voids service across all our homes. Palm went through a robust procurement process and scored highly on quality and price. This new contract provides an enhanced customer experience through offering repair appointments at the first point of contact and increasing the number of repairs completed ‘right first time’. A number of our tenants were involved in choosing Palm and we will continue to work alongside them and our wider tenant group to monitor their performance.
Building successful and sustainable communities
Working in partnership with tenants to create and support sustainable communities.
In order to create successful and sustainable communities it is important to work in partnership with others and to ensure that our properties remain fit for purpose. Mostly this is done by keeping our tenants’ homes in good condition, both inside and out, and by ensuring good tenancy and estate management. However, from time to time it does become necessary to dispose of properties and we have been working closely with our local authority partners during the year reviewing our supported housing provision. This resulted in the sale of a large property at North Road in Ripon that was no longer suitable for the customer group and could not be used as alternative social housing provision.
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Growth and financial strength York Housing Association now owns 941 homes and manages a further 106 on behalf of other landlords. This brings the total number of homes owned and managed to 1,047. We are continuing to increase this number in order to meet our strategic aim of “providing as many good quality homes as we can”. In order to do that we have to remain financially strong. A full copy of the audited accounts is available on our website or on request from the Managing Director. The total reserves balance at the end of the year is almost £10 million. Before reflecting the impact of the deficit on the pension fund, the audited accounts show a surplus of £515,000. This year’s accounts show a change in reporting which requires us to show the movement on the pension scheme deficit. In total £727,000 has been charged to the Income and Expenditure account. Side note: In line with all Housing Associations the accounts to the 31 March 2019 have been prepared in accordance with the International Financial Reporting Standards (FRS)102
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Income & Expenditure Account Year to Year to 31/03/19 31/03/18 £000 £000
Turnover 6,115 7,542 Cost of Sales - 230 - 1,037 Operating expenditure Operating surplus
- 4,597
- 4,911
1288
1594
Gain on disposal of housing properties
-
344
Interest receivable and similar income
21
15
Interest payable and similar charges
- 794
- 813
Impact of pension changes
- 727
-
Surplus for the Financial Year - 212 1 ,140
Sound governance and risk management Balance sheet
Year to Year to 31/03/19 31/03/18 £’000 £’000 Fixed assets Housing properties 41,226 44,026 Other tangible fixed assets 1,090 1,044 42,316 45,070 Current assets Properties held for sale Stock Trade and other debtors Investments Cash and cash equivalents
3,575 5 687 2,528 722
7,517 5,994
Total Assets Total Liabilities Amounts falling due within one year Amounts falling due after more than one year Provisions for liabilities Pension Liability
Steve Secker
Julia Histon
In uncertain economic times, retaining a strong Board, who are able to assess and manage risks, and have the necessary skills to govern the Association’s affairs is critical. We are fortunate that at York Housing Association we have been able to attract and retain strong candidates to the Board of nine members. We have not historically remunerated Board Directors (as this is normal practice for Associations owning and managing under 1,000 homes). However, with the new complexities of being part of a larger Group structure, delivering an increased development programme and management service, and now owning
490 5 547 4,003 949
49,833
51,064
- 1,952 - 36,473 - - 1,428
- 3,010 -37,737 - 125 -
9,980
10,192
Shahida Iqbal and managing 1047 homes, it was time to introduce remuneration. From April 2019, £2,000 per annum is offered to all Non-Executive Board Directors, which has been benchmarked against other Housing Associations of a similar size as the average remuneration level. During the last year we have seen the departure of three Board Members - Janet Whipps (Chair), Mike Leonard, and Alison Rusdale (Non-Executive Board Directors), two of whom had to retire as they reached their maximum term in office. We were delighted to appoint 2 new Non-Executive Directors to the Board - Steve Secker (Chair), and Shahida Iqbal (Non Executive
Board Director). Julia Histon the Managing Director of York Housing Association has also joined the Board as an Executive Director. The Board meets six times a year to consider the regular Business of the Association, plus participates in four Group Committees to ensure that sufficient scrutiny is given to specific areas of the Association’s work. During 2019 the Board is holding a number of its meetings on location in various housing schemes to ensure it remains in touch with its customers.
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Performance 2018/19 York Housing Association now owns 941 homes and manages a further 106 on behalf of other landlords. This brings the total number of homes owned and managed to 1047.
We provide homes to meet a diverse range of customer needs
131 Older people
258 Supported housing
4 Leasehold (where 100% of the property has been purchased but YHA manages communal services)
76 Shared ownership
551 General needs; families, couples and singles.
27 Students
Property locations Whitby
43 properties 15 shared properties
North Yorkshire
Scarborough
62 properties
7 properties 5 shared properties
Sheriff Hutton
Malton
7 properties 6 shared properties
York 83 properties
Leeds
West Yorkshire
10
605 properties 23 shared properties
Selby
Beverley 56 properties
12 shared properties
East Yorkshire
4 properties 4 shared properties
During the year we housed 245 households as follows; 6 sheltered accommodation
Support Services Our support services remain vital to helping people sustain tenancies. During the year we supported a total of 181 households and our support staff helped achieve the following;
14 extra care
Prevented 46 households from being evicted
9 supported housing
Supported 51 households to maintain independent living
27 students
Ensured that 8 people were re-settled into permanent homes
52 general needs 137 homeless persons/temporary accommodation
Property sales We sold 7 shared ownership properties during the year.
Secured £21,049.00 in backdated benefit claims Secured £17,365.20 in additional or unclaimed benefits
Our performance during the 2018/19 financial year was as follows;
31 March 2019
31 March 2018
Our average rents during 2018/19 were;
Arrears
1.74%
1.97%
Rent and Service Charges Collected
99.90%
98.42%
Room in a shared house £65.92
Rent lost through homes being vacant (voids)
1.78%
1.38%
One bedroom £79.91
Bad debts
1.05%
1.02%
Evictions
0
1
Two bedroom £88.44 Three bedroom £118.93 Four bedroom £131.07 Five bedroom £146.02
2018/19 Health and Safety compliance work Fire Equipment Servicing & Repairs
Commercial Boilers Servicing
Fire Risk Assessment & Rectification
Asbestos Survey
£45,000
£14,000
£67,656
£10,000
Servicing - Gas, Oil, & LPG
Water Hygiene
Electrical Test & Rectify - Domestic
Total
£106,000
£19,384
£68,473
£330,513
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Providing a strong foundation for life
SILVER York Housing Association is a Housing Association with Charitable Status Registered in England under the Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies Act 2014 Registration No 16826R
Design www.redbonsai.co.uk
2 Alpha Court, Monks Cross Drive, Huntington, York Y032 9WN T: 01904 636061 F: 01904 612623 E: info@yorkha.org.uk www.yorkha.org.uk @york_ha