Community Investment

We believe home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling, where everyone has the right to equal opportunities, no matter their background. Most importantly, we want people to feel proud of where they live.

Community investment lies at the heart of achieving this by providing people with access to the support they need to succeed and proactively managing and improving shared spaces and communal areas.

We believe local people know what's best for them and their community. Different people have different needs. And our customers are no different. We’re strong believers in the fact that people usually know what’s best for them and their community.

That’s why we work with the community. When people living in an area take a leading role in creating change, great things can happen.

Through initiatives like our community Cafés, Community Action Days, Opportunities Hubs, Good Grub Clubs, Slow Cooker Courses, and more, our Community Investment Team support communities to:

• Increase access to services, creating opportunities to increase social connections
• Deliver local level support to address community priorities
• Address estate improvements through community projects
• Improve access to employment opportunities
• Fund organisations providing beneficial services through Community Funding
• Work with internal & external stakeholders to address the impact of the Cost of Living

Read our Customer Annual Report 2023-24

In 2023/2024, we launched our regional model, which divided our operations into three regions. This approach keeps us rooted in our communities and enables us to cater to diverse needs.

Between 2020-2025 we’re investing £15m in our communities to drive change and transform these areas.

We’ve done the research. We asked what people needed. So we’re focusing on three key areas:

• Community empowerment
• Employment
• Health and wellbeing

We take the lead from those who know first-hand what they, their families and their neighbours need to succeed. That’s why customer involvement is key to how we shape our community investment plans.

We’ve identified key communities, known as our Community Investment zones.

Our Community Investment Zones

There are some big issues we want to help tackle. They affect some communities more than others. So we don’t want to spread ourselves too thinly, because that’s not helpful to anyone.

Instead, through our research, we’ve found key communities that’ll benefit most from our support. We’re working with each community on an individual basis. It’s not about telling people what we think is right, it’s about listening to communities to help them create positive change.