Strategic Report

These financial statements report against the final year of our five-year corporate plan which ran to the end of March 2024.

The plan set out our ambition, not only for what we wanted to have delivered by 2024 but crucially how we delivered it. Our strategic objectives of delivering good services, providing quality homes, and developing more homes ran throughout the plan to 2024 and remain prominent in our work moving forwards. These objectives are consistent with many housing associations but here at settle our unique selling point is how we deliver our services. This is about being a landlord that our residents trust. It is about listening to residents, having effective engagement, receiving feedback, and designing our products and services with the resident at the heart of them. It is about ensuring that we continue to provide safe, secure, and high-quality housing that remains genuinely affordable to people struggling to find a place to live.

Our colleagues are key to realising our ambition. They are passionate about our social purpose and ensuring we give something back to residents and communities. Listening to the voice of colleagues, together with what they see and hear helps underpin our continuous improvement of services.

settle's Group Structure

Our governance structure remains simple and provides a clear line of sight from the Board to the subsidiary, Rowan Homes (NHH) Limited. The subsidiary Board members are drawn from the group Board, and this ensures that its activities support settles objectives.

The group is known as settle and consists of:

  • settle – the asset holding Housing Association and group parent. It is registered as a Co-operative and Community Benefit Society and Registered Provider of Social Housing with the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH);
  • Rowan Homes (NHH) Limited (RH) – a wholly owned company limited by shares. RH’s purpose is to develop new housing properties for outright sale and any profits are distributed to settle.

settle

settle Group

co-operative and community benefit society and registered housing provider

Rowan Homes (NHH) Limited

private company limited by shares

Regulation

We are regulated by the Regulator of Social Housing and maintain the highest grade for governance, G1, and V2 for financial viability under the regulator’s Governance and Financial Viability Standard. We are also overseen by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Board and Committee Structure

Our Board and Committees at settle are crucial to setting the strategic direction of the group and monitoring performance. Board and Committee membership is based on skills and knowledge. We have adopted the National Housing Federation’s Code of Governance 2020, and the Board annually review their effectiveness and skills. The settle Governance Framework in 2023/24 included four Committees of the Board - Audit and Risk Committee, Development and Asset Committee, Nominations and Remuneration Committee, Operations Committee - each with delegated responsibilities set out in Terms of Reference and supporting the work of the Board, a Task and Finish Group, Operating Regulations, Financial Regulations, and a Schedule of Delegated Authority.

The Audit and Risk Committee: provides an assurance function of risk management and internal control and reviews the work of the internal and external auditors. This includes review, scrutiny, and constructive challenge in relation to external audit, internal audit, effectiveness of internal controls via ‘deep dives’, whistleblowing, fraud, financial reporting, risk appetite, strategy and management, complaints, and other related matters. The Committee also reviews the audited financial statements and recommends them to the Board for approval. The Committee reports annually to the Board on its work and conclusions.

The Development and Asset Committee: considers and makes recommendations to the Board on major proposals relating to property and land transactions in the context of settle’s development and regeneration strategy and approves development and sales activities between Board-agreed thresholds. Incorporation of asset matters into the Committee’s remit took effect from the beginning of the 2023/24 financial year, with the Committee also responsible for overseeing and advising the Board on the strategic direction of the asset management and investment strategy, asset acquisition and disposal (including regeneration), and monitoring investment in settle’s assets. The Committee’s monitoring of internal controls and risk has been widened to include consideration of risks associated with the planned maintenance programme, alongside strategic development risk and risk management of the development programme.

The Nominations and Remuneration Committee: continues to consider settle’s People strategy, remuneration, including executive pay, employee pay awards, pensions arrangements and Board and committee remuneration, and support the Board in reviewing the effectiveness of the governance arrangements of the organisation. The Terms of Reference are, however, more detailed on remuneration matters, and ‘nominations’ matters, such as Board membership, tenure, and succession planning.

The Operations Committee: supports the Board in ensuring effective frameworks and opportunities are in place to enable, encourage and support residents and other customers to engage with, influence and contribute to strategic decision-making, alongside the oversight and delivery of operational plans. Responsibilities are to monitor and consider the risks facing front line delivery in relation to core affordable, landlord services, and to ensure the Board has assurance regarding the impact that the core affordable landlord service and the activity of settle has on local operating areas.

The settle Board also convenes a Treasury Task and Finish Group on an ad hoc basis to support the Board on the delivery of the treasury strategy.

The Board reviews the Terms of Reference for each Committee annually, and each Committee reported regularly to the Board during the year on how it discharges its functions.

Purpose, Corporate Strategy and Strategic Objectives

Our 2019-2024 corporate strategy set out our purpose, ambition and strategic objectives. These financial statements report on the final year of delivering that plan. We have a new plan in place running from April 2024 to 2030 and will report on that from our next financial statements.

Despite an extremely challenging external operating environment, we remain focused on achieving our objectives and ensuring we are getting the basics right for residents.

Our corporate plan to 2024 was shaped around delivery of the purpose “to help people who are struggling to find a place to live, to help our customers stay in their homes comfortably, so they can live the life they choose”, and four strategic objectives to ensure we maximised our delivery against that purpose:

  • Delivering good services – delivering on our commitment to be Basically Brilliant, getting the basics right day in day out, being known for good customer service and using data insight together with resident feedback;
  • Delivering more homes – playing our part in solving the housing crisis through the development of affordable homes across a range of tenures in our locality;
  • A well-run social business – maximising our financial capacity whilst continuing to ensure that we remain stable and viable as well as being a partner of choice to our stakeholders; and
  • Being a place where colleagues love to work – to be the ‘go to’ place to work in our geographic area.

As a well-run business, we remain financially strong and stable. Our risk assurance framework allows oversight of our ability to respond to the challenging and changing environment. We have sufficient financial capacity to meet these challenges and our long-term financial planning demonstrates that we will continue to operate with reasonable headroom above covenant levels.

Our Annual Delivery Plan (ADP), agreed with the Board, provides focus, and is measured on an ongoing basis. We continue to provide services that meet residents’ needs by adopting flexible, creative, and intuitive way of working. During the past year we have delivered a range of achievements across our key strategic objectives:

Delivering good services

We have continued to focus on embedding our Basically Brilliant programme, with a relentless focus on getting the basics right across the organisation; building positively on all aspects of residents’ interactions with settle and ensuring we drive improvements based on understanding what is most important to them. We want to ensure that great customer satisfaction can be achieved with minimal effort from the resident, and Basically Brilliant is integral to this.

We continue to ensure that the resident voice is heard throughout our work; that we provide multiple opportunities for residents to provide feedback and that we provide services that residents value, based on what we learn through data and engagement.

This year marks our first full year of early surveys against the Tenant Satisfaction Measures, along with ongoing projects like our Big Door Knock, now in its sixth year, and our Voice of the Resident panel.

We report progress on outcomes and delivery quarterly to the Board Operations Committee. Highlights across the year include:

  • Achieving our highest scores for resident trust and effort since we started reporting against this as part of our plan to 2024. We had a target for the year to achieve a resident trust score of 7.2 [where the higher the score the better] - we achieved 7.4. For resident effort, we had a target of below 4 [where the lower the score the better] – we achieved 2.8. The scores we have achieved are driven by the resident engagement we have completed throughout the year – we have made sure to listen and put plans in place where improvements are needed. This has included improvements to response times in our Customer Hub, efficiencies in our repairs service to help us respond more quickly to routine repairs and get more repairs right at the first visit, and our neighbourhood improvement plan, to improve the standards of communal areas.

  • Our overall scores for the tenant satisfaction surveys completed during the year show that 70% of residents scored very satisfied or satisfied with settle as a landlord. A further 14% said they thought we were ok. This meant that 84% of residents were satisfied, or ok with settle.
  • We have made it easier to access services from settle. During the year we implemented digital improvements so that residents can now report all aspects of a repair, book the appointment and change this online. We have implemented call back so that callers don’t have to wait in a queue to get through by phone; we are trialling video calling through our service Hub, improving our right first-time response rate; and we have also launched Live Chat.
  • We launched a new model of service delivery, underpinning all areas of our work in neighbourhoods. Based on our principle of being there for all residents when they need us and increasing the support we provide to vulnerable residents to help them sustain their tenancies.
  • We have continued to see the high impact of the additional support we provide, including to vulnerable residents to help them sustain their tenancies. We achieved over £3m social value return, calculated using the HACT model, and arrears levels of 2.39% for the year, under the target set as well as below the median level across the sector.

Throughout the year, we have continued to work hard to ensure we respond to complaints quickly, putting things right and learning from when things have gone wrong. We have seen ongoing strong performance throughout the year, with 98% of all complaints responded to within the Housing Ombudsman timeframes.

Delivering more homes

As a regionally focused housing provider we understand the housing needs of our local communities. Our development pipeline during the past year has continued to focus on meeting those needs.

During the past year we delivered 212 homes, all of which were affordable. We delivered 21 homes for social rent, 105 homes for affordable rent and 86 homes for shared ownership.

Our commitment remains for at least 90% of the homes we deliver to be affordable. In agreement with our Board, we continue to be agile about our housing targets, mindful of the ongoing challenges in the external environment presented by global instability, the ongoing impact of inflation and cost increases; this agility ensures we remain focussed on increasing the supply of much-needed affordable homes, with the ability to respond appropriately and in a financially responsible way. Our target during the year ahead is to build between 250-350 new homes.

As part of this, we are building an increasing number of social rented homes to address the affordability issues many of our residents face. Last year, just under 10% of the homes we delivered were for social rent; we expect this to increase to around 20% next year and around 30% during the following year.

We continue our focus on regeneration to improve the quality of housing in our local area, providing options both for rent and for home ownership through shared ownership. As part of this, during the past year we have made important progress on schemes in Hitchin and Letchworth Garden City, working directly and in partnership with other local organisations.

A well-run social business

Continuing to be a well-run social business remains a fundamental aspect of our strategy. Having a strong governance and internal control framework gives us the confidence to act and deliver on our commitments. We have effective risk management and ensure that our risk appetite statement underpins our approach to business activity but for settle being a well-run business is more; it is about being a regulated entity that has an effective internal control environment and the assurance that we are operating within our rules. This reflects three key areas of focus:

  • We will use our data on costs and performance to target year on year efficiencies to our cost base, with a clear focus on measuring and monitoring whether these efficiencies are realised.
  • We will continue to invest in our assets, ensuring that our asset management programme is fully funded within our long-term business plan. This will ensure we continue to provide good homes that reflect the needs of residents.
  • Social purpose is at the core of settle. We run our business to produce sufficient levels of surplus to ensure we balance good services and new homes with delivering that social purpose.

Developing a place where colleagues love to work

We have continued to deliver excellent outcomes emanating from the delivery of our People strategy. Key outcomes include:

  • Colleague engagement – through our engagement surveys and colleague groups we ensure everyone has a voice at settle, our result of 7.9 shows the strength of our culture; that we have good engagement from colleagues and alignment with our values and behaviours.
  • Professionalism – we have a clear policy and plan in place that will ensure we go beyond the mandatory requirements outlined in the Social Housing Regulation Act, ensuring our colleagues understand the importance and value of being a professional in the sector.
  • Talent management – we have a clear robust methodology for managing performance and identifying talent across the organisation, this enables us to identify and develop our colleagues to be the future leaders of the organisation, whilst maintaining a resident-focussed service.
  • Roll out of our settle house-warming programme - an immersive experience into settle for all new colleagues; enabling them to understand the part they play in the resident journey and to feel the importance of the culture at settle from day one.
  • Recruitment - we have changed the way we recruit new colleagues by moving away from various agencies and traditional adverts to a dedicated managed service that is managed by one person through a third party using new methodology. This improves the candidate journey and calibre of candidate we recruit.
  • Continued focus on equality, diversity and inclusion, supported by our value everyone colleague group, working to ensure everyone feels valued and included in the organisation.

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