You said… We did…

We’re pleased to launch our first Sustainability Strategy for 2025-26

Firstly, we’d like to say a huge thank you to those of you who completed our sustainability strategy survey towards the end of last year. We received over 700 responses, which demonstrates that sustainability is just as important to you as it is to us.

Although this is our first sustainability strategy, we are starting from a good place. You can read more about this in our 2023-24 environmental, social and governance (ESG) report here. We’ve linked our objectives to the Sustainability Reporting Standard (SRS), which is also used to reference our annual ESG report. In delivering this strategy, we want to measurably reduce our environmental impact, as a whole, year on year.

Following an in-depth gap analysis in 2024, our areas of focus are:

• Residents
• Carbon
• Waste
• Water
• Biodiversity
• Procurement
• Pollution

We’ll be using three key approaches to reduce our impact in all these areas. They are:

• Ask the questions – avoiding an impact in the first place is better than reducing the impact. We will look at opportunities to question the impact on sustainability when we are making decisions.
• It takes a team – The successful delivery of this strategy takes a team. Our colleagues and residents are at the heart of this, and we’ll continue to build on these two concepts.
• Design ‘in’ the future – Decisions we make now about our homes, estates or developments need to facilitate any measures we may need to incorporate further down the line. For example, EV charging, solar panels and shutters on windows.

Click here to view the full strategy including our action plan for 2025-26.

To support this strategy, we’d like to support local community champions and local projects that focus on environmental sustainability. Please get in touch with us at residentvoice@havebury.com if you are part of a local sustainability group or project, so we can discuss this further.

To further support our sustainability commitments, you may have seen that we’ve recently secured £3.4m from the Government’s Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund Wave 3. You can read more about this here.

In May 2024 , we asked for your feedback about our ASB policy, so we could learn what we do well and where we need to improve.

Your feedback is helping improve our approach to dealing with anti-social behaviour (ASB) reports. We want your home and neighbourhood to be a safe place to live. We understand the impact ASB can have on you and your family, and alongside the police, we play an active role in addressing this.

We wanted you to tell us how you feel about our current policy. Had we missed anything that you think should be included? Can we do something better?

49 residents completed the survey, with 59% of respondents saying that it’s clear from our policy, our website, and the information provided what is and is not ASB, and 22% of respondents who have previously reported ASB to us felt we replied in a timely manner.

Here is some of the feedback:

“The current problems we have are being dealt with by a brilliant staff member, but the whole process is prolonged. I’m aware of the hoops that must be gone through and due process, but it turns into months of disruption”.

“The main area of improvement I feel is to be listened to and believed. It has certainly not felt that way, and I
personally have felt belittled at times”.

“Listen and make the people who are suffering ASB the priority.”

“Having had quite a bit of contact with you, we have been happy with how everything has been dealt with, so thank you”.

“The process was okay, but I think you should work better with social services, police, and courts to improve the
quality of staff training.”

“Now that Scarlett has taken over my case, I couldn’t ask for a more professional person to look after me and my dog. She has gone above and beyond for me, and I am so grateful to her.”

Following your feedback and further conversations with residents, we updated our policy in June 2024. We have
introduced a new team leader review of all ASB cases, which increases oversight and support.

We have also:

• Introduced a settling-in visit for new residents so we can identify support needs and tenancy risks earlier.
• Improved mandatory training for our Neighbourhood and Estates team.
• Continued our work with partner agencies through multi-agency ASB partnership meetings.
• Worked on a tailored response to each individual and their needs through launching our Attitudes, Respect and Rights commitment.
• Introduced a survey to all residents whose ASB cases have been open for 28 days to see how we can improve the outcome.

You can read our updated policy here.

In April 2023, we consulted with 566 of our residents who had moved into their homes in the past 12 months.

We wanted to understand what their experience was like when it came to moving into one of our homes. As well as make recommendations on how we can improve the service. 84 residents responded to the survey, thank you to those who got involved.

Key highlights of the feedback include:

– 62% of respondents were satisfied with the level of decoration when they moved in.
– When moving in, 65% of respondents were happy with the home’s cleanliness.
– 53% of respondents were happy with the outside space at their home (where it was applicable).
When we asked about the helpfulness of the information we sent before a resident moved in, 93% of respondents said they found it helpful or fairly helpful.
– Finally, we asked respondents what we could do to improve their overall experience of moving into a new home. While we met or exceeded expectations for 35% of you, you also gave us helpful feedback that will help us improve.

As a direct result of what you told us, there are four main areas we will be looking to improve our voids standard.

– The quality and range of the information we give you during your sign-up process. Including more details on how your heating system works.
– 15% of respondents said, “The home needed repairs after moving in that Havebury hadn’t noted”. To prevent this from happening in the future, we will ensure we conduct more thorough inspections whilst a home is empty.
– 13% of respondents said that although work had been completed, the quality could have been better. This mainly refers to cases where we finished work in a home and had yet to thoroughly clean up before we left, meaning the resident had to do this after they moved in. We will ensure that this is not the case in the future.
– For some of you, there were preferences for different things that aren’t a part of our current lettings standard, and we’ll look into these in more detail.

We have reviewed all of the suggestions made and have created an action plan to further improve the sign-up and moving-in process.

Your feedback has helped shape our new policy.

We are committed to providing you with a flexible repairs and maintenance service, that takes into account your individual needs. Although we are launching our new policy, we will continue to make improvements to the service we provide, to meet the changing needs of our residents.

Last year, we asked you to help us shape this policy. 518 of you took part in this consultation, and you told us that:

• You preferred our in-house team carrying out repairs in your home, compared to contractors.
• You’d like more flexibility around appointment times, including later appointments during the week, as well as the option of weekend appointments.
• You’d prefer to provide any feedback you have straight to the technician once they’ve finished the job.
• You’d like us to call you, instead of texting, when we are on our way to an appointment.

We’ve used all this feedback to shape our new policy, which you can find here.

To find out more about our repairs service, click here.