1 Chair and Chief Executive’s Statement
holds G1/V1 gradings from the Regulator of Social Housing - the highest possible ratings for governance and viability. Strategy Our commitment to maintaining a consistent corporate strategy supports the continued financial strength and resilience of the organisation through on-going economic and political uncertainty. This has enabled us to make further progress against the four strategic themes of our Business Plan: more and better homes; more opportunities for colleagues; being more efficient; and being more influential on behalf of older people. During the course of the year, we further refined our housing development strategy to concentrate where the need is greatest and the supply least, namely social and affordable housing, extra care housing (independent communal living supported by dedicated medical and catering offerings) and care homes. Our focus will now be on 70% social housing (including affordable housing where appropriate) and 30% older people’s shared ownership (OPSO). We will also be concentrating on a selected group of local authorities with whom we intend to develop closer partnerships. At a time when housebuilders are cutting the number of homes they are building, we believe there is a good opportunity for well-capitalised housing associations such as Anchor to be counter-cyclical in our housing development. However, better clarity from the UK government on social rent rates is necessary for those of us who are investing on a 30-year timescale; ideally, we would like to see these decided for a 10-year timeframe. While our eventual aim is to grow our care home operations from its current size of 121 to 140, we have also taken into account the more challenging post-COVID operating environment for the sector. Accordingly, in the near term we intend to concentrate our efforts on our existing portfolio with a strategy of improving financial performance while maintaining high standards of care quality and customer satisfaction. We are also focused on achieving strong colleague recruitment, retention and development as well as making efficiencies by improving our workforce planning. This in turn reduces the need to use agencies, giving our residents a more consistent team delivering services and reducing overall staffing costs. We are also introducing new technology which digitises and speeds up some of the processes in our care homes, enabling colleagues to spend more time with residents. Our stock condition survey programme continues to progress and add valuable data to enable more accurate, prioritised investment planning. We have undertaken an accelerated programme to update our stock condition data. As at 31 March 2024, more than 80% of our stock condition data was less than two years old. Our strategic review programme has now covered 38% of our portfolio, and enables us to better understand our existing assets and identify opportunities for regeneration. We have plans to transform our housing operations, how we deliver repairs and planned works, and changing how we manage development to improve the certainty of delivery of new homes. Introducing more technology to enable our services will help us to become more efficient for residents. A more efficient and consistent property service will also benefit all our residents and help achieve our carbon reduction aims. You will read more about our work to procure new repairs and asset investment contracts in the Strategic Report. 6 Anchor Hanover Group Annual Report & Financial Statements 2024
More than 1,000 colleagues and residents are already benefiting from new Wi-Fi, as part of our Connected Properties project to roll out Wi-Fi to all our rented housing and care locations. All our care homes are expected to have Digital Care Planning by mid-August 2024. We are making strong progress on retrofitting more than 300 of our homes with £2.5 million in funding accessed through the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund. Board and senior management changes On 1 September 2023, we were pleased to welcome two new Non-executive Directors to Anchor’s Board. Elizabeth Froude has been in the housing sector for almost 20 years and worked for large and complex organisations in several parts of England. She is currently Group Chief Executive at Platform, which operates coast to coast through the Midlands. Fred Angole is Finance Director and Deputy Chief Executive of YMCA St Paul’s Group, a supported housing provider that specialises in providing accommodation and wellbeing services to vulnerable young Londoners. He is also a Non-executive Board member and Chair of the Audit & Risk Committee at Notting Hill Genesis Housing Association. In May 2024, we welcomed Julia Mixter as the new Executive Director – Business Services. Julia joined us from Raven Housing Trust. As Director of Transformation at Raven, she led an award-winning multi-year business transformation programme to improve services to customers, drive value for money and reduce operational risk and waste. We would like to express our thanks to Richard Petty, Non- executive Director and Kate Smith, Executive Director – Business Services for their services to Anchor. Richard stepped down from the Board at the end of his term in September 2023 and Kate left to become CEO of another housing association in January 2024. Board visits and engagement The non-executive directors have been actively engaged with the organisation throughout the year, participating in our five committees: Audit and Risk, Service Quality, Asset Investment and Development, Nomination and Remuneration, as well as attending away days with senior management. Non-executive directors visited more than 150 locations across Anchor in the year to hear directly from residents about the issues that matter most. These visits are extremely useful in hearing residents’ concerns first hand and enabling the Board to identify service areas which can be improved or enhanced. They also help Board members to verify that the strategies and policies being set by the Board have what is important to residents at their centre. Thank you We are very grateful to the many partners and stakeholders who work with us for the benefit of residents. Special thanks also to the many residents who volunteer their time and ideas to support our continuous improvement efforts. Thank you, too, to all our colleagues, whose compassion, resilience and teamwork are essential in delivering the services on which our residents depend.
Christopher Kemball Chair
Sarah Jones Chief Executive
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