PLACE
Creating a great place to work
PLACE
Quality
homes
PLACE
Quality Homes
Place
Quality homes
We aim to help people succeed by providing quality, affordable, safe and secure homes, while also building more to meet future needs.
In our Corporate Plan, we committed to:
Implementing our Asset Management Strategy
Refreshing our Growth Strategy and delivering the Growth Programme
Reviewing our Building Safety Strategy
Heres how we got on:
Co-designing a new plan for managing our assets
Managing our assets responsibly was a key focus last year, and we created a new Asset Management Strategy and increased investment in our stock.
In February and March 2023, we carried out 20 workshops with customers across our neighbourhoods, in person and online, to gather thoughts on our Asset Management strategy.
92 customers gave views on various aspects of it, including repairs and maintenance, sustainability, and customer voice. All of this informed our new strategy, which you can find on our website in the new strategies space.
Through this new strategy, we’ll be focusing on what’s important to customers in terms of their home.
We will:
Go beyond basic compliance
Introduce a ‘quality of homes’ customer group to shape our future services
Complete 100% stock condition, HHSRS, and EPC assessments by the end of 2025
Pilot, consult, develop, and implement a revised lettable standard
Implement best practice contract management
Establish a working asset management group including all business areas and customer voice
Deliver our successful Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund bid
Design, introduce and embed our new service offer for repairs
Our new Asset Management Strategy commits to investing over £97 million in repairs and maintenance to your homes and communal areas over the next three years.
Our new Asset Management Strategy commits to investing over £97 million in repairs and maintenance to your homes and communal areas over the next three years.
Asset management: how are we doing?
Compliance:
Gas
Fire
Asbestos
Water safety
Electrical testing and commercial lifts
Domestic lifts: Improvement work needed
Housing standards:
Homes that don’t meet the Decent Homes Standard
Damp & Mould (Cat 2) at year-end (target: less than 3%). This is for instances where the hazard is less serious or less urgent than a category 1 hazard.
Here’s a snapshot of what our housing stock looks like:
Property type
Number
Houses
7,124
Bungalows
86
Apartments/flats
5,531
High-rise buildings
17
Garages
159
Play areas
13
Highways
21 miles
CASE STUDY:
Moston Campus
Customers started moving into their brand new homes on our new Moston Campus development from March 2024. Moston Campus is made up of 60 homes: 10 apartments available for social rent, 33 houses for affordable rent via Manchester Move, and 17 houses for Rent to Buy applications.
This new housing development in North Manchester brings together a number of important elements that we hope to see in residential investment in Manchester – high quality affordable housing, low carbon homes to limit running costs to our residents, and bringing brownfield land back into productive use [plus] private gardens, bike storage, electric vehicle charging and various affordable housing options."
Councillor Gavin White
Manchester City Council’s Executive Member for Housing and Development
Growth and development
Growth expenditure
Our Growth team completed a total of 117 new homes and started an additional 31 homes.
We continue to work hard to reduce the impact of our new homes on the environment, and this work has included moving to renewable heating instead of gas in each new home.
The overall tenure split was:
Social Rent
Affordable Rent
Shared Ownership
Rent to Buy
Intermediate Rent
What we’ve done to improve building safety
We’re determined to provide better quality, safer homes for our customers. This year, we’ve worked hard to achieve our commitment to provide great places to live by completing safety and improvement works on your homes.
Your safety remains our highest priority. If you ever have any questions, concerns, or suggestions regarding safety in your building, don’t hesitate to contact us, as we’re here to ensure you feel safe and secure in your home.
The government recently introduced new legislation aimed at developing the fire and structural safety of apartments, particularly for high-rise buildings. We have made the following improvements around fire safety for our residents:
Communication and information
Over the year we held regular fire safety meetings in all our high-rise buildings, providing residents with up-to-date information and addressing concerns.
We installed new notice boards in communal areas, regularly updated, and sent detailed letters to every high-rise resident, covering:
Building-specific fire safety systems
Clear evacuation procedures
Importance of fire door maintenance
Guidelines for safe balcony use
We also developed a comprehensive safety section on our website.
Repairs in customers’ homes completed over 2023/24
Satisfaction with repairs finishing the year above target (70%)
Repairs completed right first time
In the last 4 months we performed better than our target, and in March
of repairs were completed right first time
Satisfaction with most recent repair time
Satisfaction that the home is well maintained
Satisfaction that the home is safe
Repairs performance
Getting repairs right first time is top priority for us, because we’ve heard how important it is to customers. We were happy to see an upward trend, but there’s lots more work for us to do in this area through our Repairs Intervention.
Physical improvements
We completed extensive external cladding remediation works at Platt and Worsley Courts, ensuring fire-safe materials were used. We also installed new sprinkler systems in all our high-rise buildings, and upgraded the fire alarm systems across our properties to a set with faster detection.
Working more closely with the Fire Service
We significantly improved our partnership with local Fire Services, to ensure there’s rapid and effective responses in emergencies. We now conduct joint training exercises with Fire Services to familiarise them with our buildings and procedures, and we provide detailed building information to them.
Regular inspections and assessments
We conduct annual fire risk assessments in all high-rise buildings, using experienced Fire Risk Assessors. We also implemented additional monthly fire safety inspections by our facilities, caretaking, and building safety teams.
Our specialised fire management surveyors also undertake frequent inspections of both communal and domestic fire doors in medium and high-rise blocks.
A new Building Safety Strategy, coming in 2024
Given the scope of the Building Safety Act, and the introduction of the new Consumer Standards, we’ve carried over our new Building Safety Strategy to 2024/25 to make sure that it is fully scrutinised, and to allow time for full customer consultation.
Kitchen and bathroom upgrades
In 2023/24 we upgraded:
Kitchens
Bathrooms
WCs
Total value