Strategy & Vision

Everyone deserves a safe, warm and sustainable home. We are now able to set out a detailed, credible and costed programme of investment and building to deliver significantly more homes than we had previously planned.

We are:

• committed to building at least 10,000 new homes by 2030, consistent with our Abri New Homes Standard, investing more than £2.6 bn
• allocating 75% of our new build programme to social and affordable housing
• achieving a minimum customer satisfaction level of 90%, regardless of tenure
• building on our achievements and maximising the number of homes we deliver through Modern Methods of Construction
• accelerating the transition of our programme to achieve the Future Homes Standard, and enhancing our design standards to improve our biodiversity impact
• working collaboratively with our Wayfarer partners, Homes England and others to support the delivery of new homes, meeting a diverse range of needs and using our EDI data to inform how we do this.

A safe, warm and decent home is a basic ingredient for a good life, a necessary condition for good health and wellbeing and a springboard for other opportunities. We have taken time to understand our assets, their condition and our options. We have also listened carefully to our customers about what they want us to do. Two years into our corporate planning cycle, we are clearer about our priorities and investment plans based on that knowledge

We are:

• operating a zero-tolerance approach to sub-standard asset condition, actively encouraging every colleague and customer to ‘see something, say something’, so we can respond and put issues right
• committing more than £161m to improving the quality of our customers’ homes between 2022 and 2026
• using our investment capital to access funding to increase the energy efficiency of the stock that needs it most
• phasing out the most inefficient heating systems within our homes within a three year period, reducing fuel bills and improving energy efficiency
• investing at least £48m into fire safety over the same period
• conducting a review of 1,200 of our homes for regeneration viability
• working with our customers in our eight community investment zones to better meet their needs
• using our asset management approach to support our pathway to net zero, matching the milestones of the asset programme to those of the net-zero journey
• reviewing stock swaps, rationalisation, equity disposals and land sales in order to carefully balance our investment needs. When we make disposals, we use that value to replenish our overall stock with better, more efficient homes.

We are convinced that the basic building blocks of customer satisfaction are a great, wellmaintained home, backed up with a highly effective repairs service. If we combine this with clear communication and knowledgeable people on the ground that are empowered to make decisions in the best interests of our customers, then we will give customers exactly what they have told us they want: good service

We are:

• making our home repairs and maintenance team a centre of excellence in terms of quality and service, prioritising, ease of use, trackability and reliability
• structuring our housing team to give clear, accountable ownership for homes, estates and schemes, where a named person is responsible and answers to our customers
• using our bespoke Housing Professional of the Future programme to increase housing knowledge throughout the organisation
• operating a ‘see something, say something’ culture of zero tolerance for anything that is not consistent with Abri’s standards
• re-positioning our frontline colleagues back at the centre of the business, underpinned by excellent data, systems, tools and support networks
• using 4 regional panels to listen to our customers more carefully, hearing their voices throughout the organisation, including at Board level, and making the changes they want
• radically improving our approach to both operational and corporate customer communications
• ensuring that customers get off to a great start in their home with the right void standard, welcome pack and service
• readying ourselves for the future, understanding the impact that changing demographics and tenure types will have on our service design.

Abri can make a strong, positive and life-changing contribution to our communities and neighbourhoods based on our growing understanding of the needs of the people that live in them. We know that proactively managed environments with clean, safe, shared spaces and well-maintained communal areas, can create places that people feel good about. By focussing on those shared spaces as well as the fabric and quality of our homes, we can create community pride and enhance wellbeing.

We are:

• linking our community strategy directly to our asset investment strategy, using an independent survey of our priority zones to define a major programme of improvement of shared spaces, making dedicated year on year investment to improve these important parts of community life
• continuing to focus on our eight Community Investment Zones, working in close partnership with our customers and other stakeholders, creating new pathways into employment, giving at least 2,500 customers opportunities to take back financial control of their lives during the life of this strategy
• actively exploiting synergies with the emerging green economy through our Greener Futures Partnership and other collaborations while developing further opportunities within our wider supply chain
• continuing to secure external funding on behalf of our customers to benefit their communities, supplementing Abri’s own £3m per annum investment with an additional £2m over the life of this strategy
• creating new and demonstrably more effective management responses to the issues that reduce community wellbeing, such as anti-social behaviour, litter and poorly-maintained shared spaces
• making resources available to actively sustain the tenancies of those who are most vulnerable to the effects of fuel poverty and other rising living costs
• embracing all the guiding principles contained in the Government’s White Paper on social housing.

We know that some of the communities we serve are disproportionately disadvantaged. We think that inequality exists when society, organisations and people don’t embrace diversity and fail to be inclusive. In our communities and places of work we value everybody without prejudice. We want to make a meaningful contribution to improving inclusion and equality of opportunity for our customers and colleagues.

• having fully comprehensive protected characteristic data for customers and colleagues by the mid-point of 2022
• using that data to inform ALL of our delivery strategies
• examining every customer and stakeholder touchpoint with Abri and our services through the lens of EDI by the end of 2022
• reporting all main service delivery standards and satisfaction metrics, segmented by key protected characteristics, at Board level
• reporting all key employment metrics segmented by protected characteristics at Board level
• using our regional customer panels to hear a more diverse and representative selection of voices
• putting energy and resources into campaigns on key topics such as: racism, women’s safety, gender pay, disability, hate crime and other topics that matter to us and our communities
• refreshing our EDI strategy in 2023 to reflect the understanding gained during 2022
• developing evidence-based interventions that promote Abri’s identity and practices as an inclusive employer and service provider
• appointing a dedicated Board EDI Ambassador to champion our efforts and plans
• maintaining a dedicated EDI committee tasked with delivering our strategy

Housing is all about people and Abri is a people organisation. While we have been setting up the right systems, processes and refining our ways of working, we have also been striving to create a distinct Abri culture based on our values. Two years on, we are clear that there are two main points of focus for Abri over the next three years of this strategy: strong visible leadership throughout our organisation and a renewed emphasis on the role our frontline colleagues play in the successful delivery of our corporate plan.

We are:

• further developing Abri’s strong Employee Value Proposition, backed up by effective talent management, to ensure we recruit, retain and promote the best people in housing
• placing a clear premium on the roles that most affect our customers’ experience of Abri, our colleagues in repairs and maintenance, housing, supported schemes and other customerfacing roles
• investing in our Housing Professional of the Future programme to ensure we develop colleagues and support them to be highly effective and to reach their full potential
• continuing to review and optimise our ways of working and operating model to make sure we are efficient and effective
• working with Best Companies to maintain our 3-star status and continue to improve our position in their rankings
• working with Investors in People to achieve Platinum status
• refreshing our Organisational Development Strategy, in line with the needs of this refreshed Corporate Strategy, ensuring we have the capability and capacity to deliver the corporate plan
• using data, policies and cultural cues to increase inclusivity, making Abri a place where diversity is understood and valued
• further enhancing our insight function to ensure we are true to our commitment to be data-led in all decision making.

It is our responsibility to make sure that we do more with our money for our existing customers, while also maximising our ability to invest in and protect our assets for future generations. During our first two years, we have embedded a strong value for money culture across our organisation. This has included setting specific parameters and golden rules to drive efficiency and financial strength over the life of this strategy. It has also involved optimising our services to our customers and communities. We call this ‘Optimum Abri’.

We are:

• actively managing corporate risk to protect our organisation
• working directly with our stakeholders in our areas of highest stock density, ensuring Abri’s offer is right and that our ask of our local partners means we can deliver more
• maintaining a robust health and safety culture that protects customers and colleagues, ensuring compliance with all relevant legislation
• continuing to optimise our treasury arrangements to enable Abri to meet all of its commitments and do more, including seeking alternative funding options such as ‘green bonds’
• improving our management costs in relation to our peers
• delivering the recommendations from our governance review to ensure our Board and associated structures are highly informed and understand our operating environment
• actively seeking new ways to support Abri’s sustainability agenda, while also finding ways to reduce the impact of decarbonisation costs on our business plan
• managing Abri’s positive performance across clear environmental, social and governance objectives
• committing to holding current, actionable and effective business continuity plans appropriate to a business of our scale
• developing a group-wide approach to encourage higher levels of innovation
• going to use the data from our 2022 customer census to ensure the needs of the diverse communities we serve are recognised throughout our governance structures.

Abri has a duty to respond to the climate crisis. We take responsibility for our emissions and environmental footprint and we must protect our customers and communities. At the start of 2020, we simply didn’t know enough to make meaningful commitments, so we promised a research project to baseline our current position and set a minimum date by which Abri would be carbon neutral.

We are:

• committed to achieving net-zero in line with the government’s timeline or faster, integrating net-zero and sustainability into our core business model
• committed to ensuring our customers and communities experience a fair and just transition to net-zero
• openly sharing our emissions data and the roadmap to zero for our business operations, development programme and supply chain, seeking to decarbonise our entire value chain
• aligning all of our business processes with the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures’ 12 recommendations regarding governance, strategy, risk management, metrics and targets
• fully aligning our sustainability strategy to the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
• working with key strategic partners to gain scale, leverage, expertise and access to the technology, funding, and stakeholders we need, using the Greener Futures Partnership to accelerate our progress
• identifying ways to bring economic benefit to currently disadvantaged communities as part of an emerging green economy
• seeking out new ways to fund our decarbonisation strategy, prioritising regional and national partnerships to drive value from the growing green economy.