Housing Matters - December 2021
Corporate news
New flats ‘built’ in just 3 days!
New apartments for people experiencing homelessness in Norwich have been 'built' in 3 days at Webster Court. Watch the video here.
The 6 modular apartments were craned into place on site, one storey per day. Each flat was lowered into position with windows, heating systems, kitchens and bathrooms already fitted.
The new apartment block, next to a housing with care scheme run by St Martin’s Housing Trust, will provide desperately-needed homes for people who are homeless in Norwich.
Tenancies of 6-24 months will be available, and tenants will be supported to find a long-term solution to their homelessness. The first residents are due to move in before Christmas.
Councillor Gail Harris, Cabinet Member for Social Housing at Norwich City Council, said:
“It’s identified in our Rough Sleeping Strategy that we are in desperate need of homes for people who might be homeless, or who are on the verge of being homeless. It’s so wonderful to see these homes that have grown almost overnight. What a start for someone who could have their lives changed, and with the proper support, will be able to progress through life in a far better place.”
Andrew Savage, Executive Development Director, said:
“We chose a modular construction route because of speed. We are looking at a very tight site here, so we needed a solution that would minimise disruption and have just three days of actual construction. The fundamental issue we have in the UK, and in Norwich, is that we do not have enough housing. That is why we have a problem, that is why we have street homelessness, that is why so many vulnerable groups are struggling to find the right accommodation. That is why it’s so important to be delivering housing.”
The new block has been delivered in partnership Norwich City Council, who gifted the land. The Department for Levelling up, Housing and Communities and Homes England supported the construction with funding. Other partners in the project include tenancy support providers St Martin’s Housing Trust and The Magdalene Group; modular supplier Modpods International; technical consultants Ingleton Wood, Aecom and Rossi Long; and Munnings Construction.
New homes at Great Hockham, Norfolk
We have started work on 18 new family homes in Great Hockham. The scheme will include 8 affordable rent homes, prioritised for people with a local connection who are in housing need. There will also be 2 homes for shared ownership and 8 new open market homes.
Homes for local people
Councillor Philip Cowen of Breckland Council joined representatives from Great Hockham Parish Council at the ceremony. He said:
“Rural communities in Breckland desperately need new housing. Our own housing needs survey showed that providing new homes, including affordable homes, in Great Hockham will help the village become a community hub for the surrounding villages.
“This is an ‘exceptions site’ outside the current village boundaries, and as such the affordable homes will be prioritised for those with a local connection, which is important.
“The way Broadland Housing has brought this project forward has been refreshing. They brought a real level of expertise in building local communities, they communicated and listened to local people, and they have been great to work with.”
Michael Newey, Chief Executive, said:
“Mixed-tenure developments like Great Hockham, with a blend of affordable homes and open-market homes, make rural schemes financially viable and encourage better integration within the community.”
The £4.2 million project on Wretham Road in the village is due to be completed in February 2023. The architects are Ingleton Wood and the builders are Smiths of Honingham. We are grateful to Mr Trappes-Lomax, the Hockham Estate owner, for insisting on a project which will supply much needed affordable housing in the village.
Andrew Savage (Executive Development Director Broadland Housing Association) with Councillor Philip Cowen (Breckland), as Michael Newey (Chief Executive, Broadland Housing Association) looks on (right)
Canary Quay nearly finished
We are now in the 4th and final phase of construction at Canary Quay in Norwich. Work is progressing on 101 x1- and 2-bedroom apartments and is due to be completed in 2022.
Broadland has worked with a range of partners to realise this ambitious city-centre project, including RG Carter, Norwich City Council, Ingleton Wood, Rossi Long, Bidwells and Savills.
The new homes will sit alongside 222 apartments completed in phases 1, 2 and 3 of the scheme. The blocks are officially named Patricia Hollis House, Richard Hawthorn House, Solace, Olive, Norada and White Moth.
The spacious apartments offer open plan living spaces, contemporary kitchens and bathrooms, a communal garden, riverside views and access to a new riverside walk that leads to the city centre. Watch a drone video of the development.
Broadland Meridian - supporting mental wellbeing
Broadland Meridian, the charitable subsidiary of Broadland Housing Association, aims to support the wellbeing of people with mental health issues.
The pandemic has been very challenging for charities and community groups working in this field. For this reason, Board members agreed to run two funding rounds in 2020-21, and have just agreed funding for 2021-22, in the form of grants awarded through the Norfolk Community Foundation.
2020-21
Last year, Broadland Meridian donated almost £50,000 to charitable organisations, including:
- Menscraft – to adapt their Pitstop mental health support sessions for men in King’s Lynn, Dereham and Great Yarmouth to digital delivery
- The Benjamin Foundation – to support young people in North Walsham
- Attleborough Day Centre – to provide meals and outreach to older people living in the area
- Off the Record Counselling Service – to re-open their waiting list to new people and offer Covid-safe environments for counselling.
Broadland Meridian also funded the pilot for our Tenant Assistance Programme – a free phone and web-based counselling, wellbeing and support programme for Broadland tenants, recognising the impact of Covid on people’s lives.
The charities supported in the latest funding round are:
- Eating Matters – to increase the number of counselling sessions available for people with eating disorders in Norfolk
- Opening Doors – to run an online fortnightly Wellbeing Wednesday peer support group for adults with learning disabilities
- Shrublands Youth and Adult Centre Charitable Trust – to re-start face-to-face meetings for its women’s support group.
- St Martin’s Housing Trust – to help employ a counsellor to support the mental health of service users.
‘Gold’ for sustainability
We are proud to maintain our GOLD status in the Sustainable Homes Index for Tomorrow (SHIFT) Awards 2021.
Louise Archer, Executive Asset Director, said:
“We are delighted to receive SHIFT gold accreditation once again, especially considering the challenges we have all faced due to Covid-19. Being sustainable runs through everything we do and we continually review our practices and processes to ensure they are as environmentally-friendly as possible, in addition to considering how we can also reduce our carbon footprint. This latest award reflects the hard work of our teams throughout the organisation on the journey to #NetZero.”
Broadland was first accredited with the SHIFT Gold standard in 2016, after progressing from highly commended in the first year of taking part, through Bronze and Silver SHIFT awards. We have maintained this standard ever since, and we were the highest scoring social landlord in 2016, 2018 and 2020.
What is SHIFT?
SHIFT is an independent audit system that assesses the environmental impacts of a landlord’s housing stock across 21 criteria. It is the recognised sustainability standard for the social housing sector.
Making the case for the Real Living Wage
Broadland Housing was first accredited as a Living Wage Employer in 2016. Speaking at the Living Wage Foundation’s 2021 event in Norwich, Chief Executive Michael Newey encouraged all businesses and organisations to follow suit:
“The real Living Wage is part of our wider strategy to deliver high levels of staff engagement and as a result deliver a high level of commitment to our tenants and to the organisation. We are a ‘people’ business. We provide people with homes, and our people provide our tenants with the services they require. The quality of our employees is vital to our success. Treating people fairly and with respect is key to our culture and drives that engagement.
“Paying our employees a real Living Wage is all about us respecting our staff, ensuring that they are paid properly for the jobs they are doing. It reduces the chances that they will need to turn to benefits to look after their families, and struggle to make ends meet.”
“Paying people a wage that allows them to have a reasonable standard of living shouldn’t be an optional extra for organisations whether in the public, private or third sector.”
Purple Tuesday
We have signed up to the Purple Tuesday campaign. This is a national initiative to improve the customer experience for disabled people and their families. We have pledged make our website more accessible for disabled users to improve their experience.
Social housing champions celebrated
Two of our new apartment blocks at Canary Quay, Norwich, have been named after Baroness Patricia Hollis and Richard Hawthorn respectively. Both were former members of Broadland’s Board and passionate supporters of social housing. Their legacy was celebrated at a special ceremony in October. The event, which had been delayed by the lockdown, was attended by family members and local MP Clive Lewis.
Speaking at the event, Chief Executive Michael Newey said:
“Patricia and Richard were amazing Board members and both played a significant part in making the Canary Quay development reality. It’s fitting that their names adorn the first two blocks which have been completed here, because above all, both of them felt it was very important that people have somewhere to call home.”
On the theme of home, poet Matthew Hollis, Patricia’s son, recited a poem he had composed for the occasion. Our thanks to Matthew for allowing us to reproduce it here.
Residence
It isn’t easy to observe, far less define,
But coming home alone you sense the company of others
Who knew the need to build was more than building,
More than merely lime and clay and sand;
That strength lay deeper than the course of brickwork,
Deeper than the bond; that halls could be a heartway
Blooming into undrawn rooms, kitchens
Leading hearthward finding light.
Someone saw it before it could be seen
And set the vision waking, no longer dreamt
But dream: doorways onto sunbreak, a brace
Of keys, a garden glimpsed by day.
Somewhere for our lives to try.
A roof to raise us closer to the sky.
Baroness Hollis, who died in 2018, was chair of Broadland Housing Association from 2009 until 2015, when the vision for Canary Quay was created. Richard Hawthorn was a tenant Board member from 2010 until his death in 2017. Read biographies of Baroness Patricia Hollis and Richard Hawthorn.
The development of over 300 new homes at Canary Quay is a partnership between Broadland Housing and R G Carter. The land formerly owned by Norwich City Football Club. The development is a mixture of social housing, affordable homes and open market properties.
(Pictured) Lord Alan Howarth, Matthew Hollis, Michael Newey (Chief Executive, Broadland Housing Association) and Clive Lewis MP
Introducing Independent East
Broadland is delighted to join 4 other social housing providers in Norfolk and Suffolk in a new informal alliance, Independent East.
We have agreed to share knowledge, experience and good practice with partners Freebridge Community Housing, Havebury Housing Partnership, Orwell Housing and Saffron Housing Trust. The aim is to support each other in delivering better services to our tenants and local communities. The new alliance will also create a collective lobbying voice for social housing in the region.
The 5 organisations will create senior management forums to explore the potential for common approaches. However, each housing association will continue to operate independently of the others.
Wendy Evans-Hendrick, Chief Executive of Orwell Housing Association, said:
“We are very much looking forward to collaborating with our Independent East Partners over the coming months and years. We will be working together on new projects, sharing ideas and best practices, and supporting each other to have the biggest possible impact on the communities we serve while driving innovation and change within the housing industry.”
Michael Newey, Chief Executive, said: “This is an exciting opportunity to support our Independent East partners so we can all continue to improve our services to tenants, and lobby for more social housing in our region.”
Top: Michael Newey (Broadland), Andrew Smith (Havebury) Front: Anita Jones (Freebridge), James Francis (Saffron),Wendy Evans-Hendrick (Orwell)
AGM
Our Annual General Meeting in September was our first-ever ‘hybrid’ AGM. Following Covid-19 safety guidance, we limited the number people attending in person and everyone else joined virtually.
Michael Newey, our Chief Executive, said the key challenges of 2020-21 had been to keep people safe, keep our homes decent and meet tenants’ expectations. But he said that Broadland staff had “gone the extra mile” to meet these challenges.
Delivering new homes
Despite the pandemic, during 2020-21 we delivered:
• a total of 147 new homes (against a target of 72), of which • 92 were affordable rent • 33 were for shared ownership
During the year we also allocated:
• a total of 348 homes, of which • 117 were to homeless households • 111 to older people.
Michael said:
“Because of the pandemic we had to adapt the way we do things. I am really proud of how we transitioned almost overnight to meet significant challenges and continue to meet our objectives.
“Supporting people has never been more important, whether through befriending calls with people who have been isolated in their homes, or dealing with urgent issues such as emergency repairs.”
Emerging from the pandemic
Michael described how the pandemic had inspired a renewed sense of joined-up thinking and partnership working to tackle homelessness in the east, which Broadland is strongly committed to as a Homes for Cathy member. He said:
“We have played a role in both the Norfolk Strategic Housing Partnership and the Norfolk Homelessness Forum. We have also worked with King’s Lynn, Norwich and Great Yarmouth to provide ‘housing first’ accommodation, move-on accommodation and homes for prison leavers.”
Looking ahead, Michael said that climate change will in the long term be a bigger issue than Covid:
“How can we deliver the 2050 net carbon zero target without pushing people into fuel poverty? One piece of research has estimated that meeting that target will cost an average of nearly £21,000 per affordable home, so the financial impact is enormous.”
Acknowledging that the pandemic will continue to have a substantial impact on Broadland’s operations during the coming year, Michael concluded:
“Our commitment to delivering Broadland’s enduring purpose - namely helping people who cannot afford decent places to live in the open market access good quality affordable homes - remains as strong as ever.”
Social Housing Regulator meets tenants
In October we hosted a meeting with Kate Dodsworth, Director of Consumer Regulation at the Housing Regulator, for tenants of 7 local social housing providers.
Tenants had the opportunity to give the Regulator direct feedback on what is important to them and how well their landlord listens to their issues and concerns.
The regional meeting was organised jointly by Placeshapers and the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH), in response to the Government’s Social Housing White Paper, published last year. This requires the RSH to create a new consumer function, and the RSH is consulting with tenants around the country on how this will work in practice.
of tenants who attended said they would like to see a new forum set up
Most popular topics for further discussuion
Reviewing service standards
Reviewing complaints together
Training
Complaints policy update
Following the new Complaint Handling Code introduced by the Housing Ombudsman, we have made some changes to how we deal with tenants’ complaints.
The focus is on ensuring we learn from our mistakes and take action to avoid them happening again. Everyone at Broadland is committed to improve the experience of our tenants when something goes wrong.
In the first 10 months of 2021, we responded to:
• 127 swift resolutions • 72 Stage 1 complaints • 4 Stage 2 appeal hearings
Three of our tenants were seeking an independent review of their complaint from the Housing Ombudsman.
We have already actioned the lessons learned from some recent complaints, such as gaps in staff training or updates needed to our processes. Other lessons learned will take longer to resolve, especially if they require a culture change across the organisation.
New ASB policy
We have recently updated our Antisocial Behaviour (ASB) policy. The ethos of the policy remains the same, but we have made some changes in response to feedback received from tenant and staff surveys, and an ASB workshop for tenants that we held earlier this year (see Housing Matters issue 3).
Tenants told us that progress on their ASB issue felt slow and our communication with them could be improved. As a result, we have tightened up some of our processes, including how we monitor cases:
- We will agree with tenants about when and how they want us to communicate with them about their issue
- We will ask tenants what would ‘solve’ the issue for them, and hold honest and realistic conversations to manage expectations
- To support equality and diversity, we will ensure that victims and perpetrators receive support to meet their needs as early as possible.