Record turnover for city housing association

Wolverhampton-based Bromford, which has 45,600 homes, said the surplus had risen to £69 million over the 12 months from £62m a year earlier. Turnover rose to £284m from £266m.

Bromford’s operating margin on social housing lettings increased to 36 per cent while social housing lettings contributed to 79 per cent of total turnover.

The housing association recorded arrears levels of just 1.9 per cent for the second successive year thanks to the positive influence of its neighbourhood coach housing model.

It has continued to invest in its communities across the West Midlands and West of England with an expanded team of income management advisors working alongside its neighbourhood coaches to help customers.

Bromford also exceeded its development targets for the year, completing 1,224 new homes – a 36 per cent increase on the previous year.

The number of homes for social rent built rose to 444 while it also built 350 affordable rent and 392 shared ownership homes.

Bromford’s future development plans were strengthened during the year after it agreed a £240m strategic partnership with Homes England, which will support the construction of 4,000 affordable homes by 2029.

Chief executive Robert Nettleton said: “We’re pleased to report a strong set of financial results in a year when the Covid pandemic continued to provide many challenges for our customers, colleagues and stakeholders. Our primary focus throughout the year continued to be the safety and wellbeing of our customers and colleagues.

“Despite the challenging environment we substantially increased our development programme delivering 1,224 new homes enabling even more customers to thrive. 1,201 of these homes were at social and affordable tenures and we are particularly pleased to have delivered even more homes for social rent with 444 completions.”

He added: “Our sustainability agenda remains at the heart of our strategy and business plan. During the year we progressed our net zero carbon targets bringing forward our target to have all homes to EPC C by two years to 2028. In addition, our long-term financial plan now includes the full cost of achieving our net zero carbon target by 2050, and remains fully compliant with our funder covenants and financial framework. We delivered on our year one targets set out in our two sustainability linked loans and have invested the savings into further community projects to add even more social value for our customers.”

Chief finance officer Paul Walsh added: “Against the backdrop of an increasingly difficult operating environment with rising inflation, significant volatility in terms of the supply and cost of materials and growing challenges around the supply of labour, we continue to deliver a strong set of financial results within the parameters of our financial framework.

“Our social housing and operating margins have improved to 36 per cent and 32 per cent respectively as a result of rent growth and conscious management of our operating costs. Our net surplus remains strong at £69m boosted by the strategic disposal of 368 homes which completed our withdrawal from three local authorities as we continue to rationalise our operations to focus on core geographical areas. Our strong surplus allows us to self-fund a significant proportion of the investment in our new and existing homes. We maintained net arrears of less than two per cent through the close working with our customers from our unique neighbourhood coach and income management teams.”