Planned investment in homes 2023/24
We continue to invest in residents’ homes and spent as planned £14million on this in 2023/24. We’re pleased that satisfaction with the investment programme has remained high at 97% satisfaction. We finished the year on track replacing:
- 747 windows
- 638 heating systems
- 236 kitchens
- 126 bathrooms
- 80 fire doors
- 42 roofs
We have budgeted to spend a similar amount on investment in homes again this year. If you’re due to have a survey carried out on your home between April 2024 and March 2025 which will determine if works are due to be carried on your home, we’ll be in touch by the end of July. There’s no need to call us to check or worry if you think you’ve missed us. We’ll make sure we contact you. We said we were going to add this information on our website, which you will find on this webpage
Planned maintenance
Over the next twelve months we will be undertaking a programme of periodic maintenance for general upkeep of external and/or communal areas prioritised on our buildings that need work the most.
When this work is due to take place, we’ll write to you with details of what’s going to be done and the name of the contractor carrying out the work. There’s no need to call us to check or worry if you think you’ve missed us. We’ll make sure we contact you
Update on investment to make homes energy efficient
The 22nd of March this year marked a year since we were awarded funding through the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund as part of our Greener Herts partnership with B3Living, Dacorum Borough Council and Watford Community Housing. During the two years of the partnership around £40m will be spent by the Greener Herts partners on improving homes to EPC band C, making them warmer and more energy efficient.
We’re proud of the progress we’ve made and looking forward to working with residents and partners to continue delivering this investment in homes.
At the end of March, we had completed assessments of 592 homes, 443 procedures in 198 homes, and fully completed improvement works to 45 properties.
The number of fully completed properties was lower than anticipated due to adverse weather conditions, affecting the completion of external works. Many homes were waiting on just one procedure to be fully complete. We look forward to picking up momentum in the coming months and completing as many homes as possible during the year ahead.
Stock condition surveys of homes
We use information from our stock condition surveys to plan our programmes of work. In the past year, our focus has been on increasing the number of stock condition surveys completed across all properties, underpinning our knowledge of homes and investment plans. We successfully met our targets for the number of surveys to be completed by the end of March 2024 – we completed a total of 2,814 surveys, exceeding our targets by 424 surveys. We are on track to ensure all surveys are less than five years old by the end of this financial year. The surveys are carried out by local area and you can look up your postcode on our webpage.
Decent homes
We finished the year with 99.9% of homes meeting the Decent Homes Standard at the end of March, against a target of 100%. Just two homes were non-decent, due to the discovery via our stock condition surveying programme of two safety issues late into March. These related to bannisters being removed by the resident/not being in place. Repair works have now been completed in these homes.
