Annual Business Plan 2022 - 2023

2022 -2023

ANNUAL BUSINESS PLAN

Contents 3 - Summary 4 - Who we are 5 - What customers tell us they want 6 - Consultation 7 - Successful Lives 8 - Great Homes 9 - Better Business 10 - Annual objectives 11 - Value for money 12 - Key performance indicators 13 - How it fits together 14 - New homes 15 - Risk management

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Summary The challenges for the year ahead will remain significant for Rooftop and its customers as the shockwaves of the pandemic and Brexit continue to have an impact on service delivery, and the cost of living crisis worsens for customers.

The labour and skills shortages which limited our ability to consistently deliver a highquality repairs service for customers are set to continue for some time. Therefore, our top priority for the year is to make improvements and deliver efficiencies in this critical service area. Alongside this, we will also develop detailed plans for long-term investment in the 7,000 homes we manage, to improve their general condition and tackle fuel poverty for the future. This year we aim to invest around £1m in upgrading 125 of our worst-performing homes to at least Band C. Inflation and rising costs will present a major challenge for our customers and Rooftop, and we will focus on realising efficiencies from our expanding digital platforms by providing more automation and the ability for customers and colleagues to self-serve where they can. At the same time, new Tenancy Support and Customer Experience teams will expand the personal advice we can provide and improve customer communication and complaints handling. We have also increased our Emergency Assistance Fund by 25% to £25,000 to help those customers most in need. We know times will be hard for many and we will do all we can to help.

Finally, we will embrace the challenge and opportunity of new consumer regulation, and the aims and aspirations of the Social Housing White Paper and ‘Together with Tenants’ charter by implementing new service standards and a wider range of ways to listen to and work with residents, to improve how we do things and how we build trust in Rooftop.

As ever, we will formally monitor progress of delivery of this plan on a quarterly basis with the Board, and provide customers with a half-year update in the autumn.

Boris Worrall - Group Chief Executive, Rooftop Housing Group

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Who we are Rooftop is a place-based Housing Association which manages around 7,000 homes, mainly in the rural communities of South Worcestershire and North Gloucestershire.

We provide a range of accommodation and support services for older people, younger people leaving care, those with dementia and people escaping domestic violence.

Rooftop is also a specialist in providing culturally appropriate homes for the Gypsy and Traveller community at three sites, in partnership with Solihull and Bromsgrove Councils.

We deliver around 150 new homes a year, the majority of which are lowcarbon and built to the highest energy efficiency rating of ‘A’ to address fuel poverty and climate change.

Partnership is critical to our success, and we work closely with the district councils of Wychavon, Malvern, Tewkesbury and Gloucester City. We are delighted to be a strategic partner with Homes England, through the Matrix Housing Partnership.

What customers tell us they want In late 2021 we asked more than 4,000 customers their views on what mattered most to them. The analysis of the 700+ responses is set out below.

Repairs was a clear top priority and that is in part why this is such a key focus for us in the year ahead. These responses have been analysed into different neighbourhoods so that we can develop local offers in different areas. The headline results were similar across all areas and are summarised below.

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Consultation We asked our customers and stakeholders which of our annual objectives were the highest priority for them.

This information shapes the way that we work to prioritise our objectives.

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Annual objectives Our plans for the year ahead are summarised below, with specific Annual Objectives set out in the table on page 10. Key Performance Indicators for 2022-23 are set out on page 12.

Successful Lives Although customer satisfaction levels fell during the pandemic across many areas of the public sector and business, we believe it right that we retain our target of 90% customer satisfaction and focus on that as a priority. Our biggest measure of success remains to be an effective landlord, as rated by our customers. An important part of this will be achieved through the launch of our Customer Charter, with new service standards, and the work of our new customer services team.

We will also continue our work in developing ‘local offers’ based on the feedback of people living in the different neighbourhoods where we manage a significant number of homes. This year, a key project will be to develop plans for all sheltered scheme alarms to be switched to digital by 2025 to ensure residents have a modern and robust system fit for the future. We will also complete a major ‘housekeeping’ exercise by reviewing all tenancy and tenure agreements to ensure that they up to date.

Supporting people into jobs and training, as well as community investment activity and the health and well-being activities we provide will remain an important area of our work in helping local people to live happy and healthy lives.

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Great Homes During the year we will confirm costed investment plans for achieving Band C energy ratings in all Rooftop homes by 2030, as part of a wider commitment to develop a ‘Rooftop Living Homes Standard’ for all homes.

This Standard will set out what you can expect from us in terms of the quality of your home as we plan investment for the years ahead; this is an aspiration which is stretching and will take time to deliver for all customers.

Our overall investment in existing homes this year will total £12 million, with around £4.5 million expected to be spent on responsive repairs and £7.5 million on planned investment in important areas such as kitchen and bathroom replacement. We also know customers have frustrations about how some repairs are delivered and ‘repair or replace’ policies and we will complete a fundamental review of repairs and planned investment during the Spring. An extra £350,000 will also be invested in tackling repairs jobs which are outstanding to bring waiting times back to pre-pandemic levels by the autumn.

This year we will submit a planning application to deliver up to 300 new homes on a brownfield site next to Gloucester City centre with around 180 of those homes for rent and Shared Ownership. Our aspiration is to deliver this as a Net Zero Carbon housing development. Alongside this, we will continue to develop affordable homes for local people in the areas where we work with a target to complete 140 homes in the 12month period.

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Better Business With Rooftop’s overall costs rising higher than inflation in areas such as repairs and maintenance, we will this year continue to push ahead with the digitisation of systems to make our organisation more efficient and effective.

We will continue to develop our new Human Resources system, implement a new finance system and roll-out hand-held devices for our Housing team so that they can service customers out in the community with less paperwork or the need to return to offices in order to log updates onto our systems.

To ensure we deliver high-quality and consistent housing services for customers we will, for the first time, provide front-line staff with formal Chartered Institute of Housing training and accreditation relevant to their role.

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Annual objectives

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Value for money Each year, Rooftop’s annual accounts include a self-assessment of how we are achieving Value for Money in delivering our annual and long-term Corporate Plan objectives and complying with the regulatory Value for Money Standard. Our assessment is based on the ‘Sector Scorecard’ metrics which include key performance indicators covering customer satisfaction, financial security, and our effectiveness as a business.

This year, our focus is on reducing void losses, most notably in supported housing, and ensuring that a review of our repairs service delivers long-term efficiencies, savings and productivity gains. We will continue to automate and digitise internal and customer services wherever we can and where it is appropriate to do so.

We also capture Social Return on Investment and will be reporting on this as part of our Environmental Sustainability, and Governance (ESG) reporting in the autumn.

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Key Performance Indicators 2022-23

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How it fits together Our Mission is why we exist and guides everything that we do.

The Corporate Plan sets out our vision for the next five years of the organisation, across three strategic themes.

We have set six Strategic Objectives to achieve by March 2026. The detail of these objectives is in our 2021-26 Corporate Plan.

This Annual Business Plan contains the Annual Objectives and Key Performance Indicators we have set for 2022-23 to support delivery of the Corporate Plan.

Our values are how we work, for our customers and each other.

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New homes Rooftop is committed to continuing to deliver as many new homes as it can. We aim to deliver an average of around 160 homes a year.

Planning Year

22-23

23-24

24-25

25-26

26-27

Total

Social Rents

93

119

111

94

51

468

Affordable Rents

21

0

0

0

0

21

Shared Ownership

31

51

67

78

49

276

Total

145

170

178

172

100

765

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Risk management Risks are assessed, prioritised and control measures are implemented with assurance across three lines reported through our Executive Team to the Audit and Risk Committee and the Board. The risk process is dynamic with risks being reviewed quarterly. Below we have summarised the top five risks within our framework which could impact on delivery of the annual objectives within this plan.

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