GREAT PLACES
HOUSING GROUP LIMITED
£345,000,000
4.75 per cent Secured Bonds due 2042 (ISIN Number
XS0842152281)
FINANCIAL
STATEMENTS FOR YEAR ENDING 31ST MARCH 2024
At the AGM of Great Places Housing Group
Limited ("Great Places") on 26th September 2024 the shareholders
agreed and adopted the financial statements for the year ending
31st March 2024. The accounts were approved by the Great Places
Board at its meeting on 1st August 2024 and subsequently
signed by our external auditors.
Turnover for 2023/24 was £172m, up by 2% from
the £168m recorded in 2022/23. The increase was driven by higher
rental income.
Operating surplus of £46.7m was 1.8% greater
than 2022/23. Operating margin improved from 24% to 25% (as defined
by the RSH VFM metric). The increase was mainly due to financial
performance of social housing lettings. Turnover from social
housing lettings was £134.1m (2022/23: £121.3m).
Turnover from shared ownership first tranche
sales and open market sales was £23.2m (2022/23:
£34.3m).
Total fixed assets were £1.63bn (2022/23:
£1.48bn).
Total debt (less arrangement fees) was £680.5m
(2022/23: £691.9m) with most of our debt (96.3%) being fixed rate
and protecting us from the high interest rates seen during the
year. In addition, we held group cash balances of £40m (including
cash held on behalf of others).
The Regulator of Social Housing graded Great
Places as G1/V2/C2 in September 2024. G1/V2 grades were retained for
governance and viability, unchanged since the previous
regulatory judgement in December 2022. The Regulator found that
Great Places demonstrated the effectiveness of its governance
arrangements and continues to effectively manage the risks of its
activities allowing it to deliver its strategic and charitable
objectives. The C2 rating
is one of the first wave of new grades against revised consumer
standards. This reflects strengths in service delivery and a
small number of areas for improvement, all of which are already
captured in the work that we will need to do to deliver our new
Corporate Plan.
Our credit ratings remain A3 (stable) with
Moody's and A+ (stable) with Fitch.
Operational performance remained strong despite
the external pressures such as increased insurance costs
combined with that a cap on rents by Government, effective
from April 2023, that was below the levels of inflation.
We saw re-let times for our homes reduce slightly to 26.3
days in the year to March 2024 (28.6 days in the previous
year).
Despite the pressures on our customers
our arrears performance remains strong. We
continue to support customers through our hardship and
community resilience funds which have also provided financial
support to community-based projects. Our commitment to
improving energy efficiency in our homes is continuing and we have
invested £2.7m retrofitting nearly 400 homes with the support of
the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund
Customer safety remains paramount and we
continue to assess our buildings and carry out works to meet
building safety legislation and improve our homes: we invested
£3.5m during 2023/24 on safety enhancements (£2.2m
2022/23)..
Repairs continue to be the most regularly
accessed service by our customers, with over 75,000 repairs
requests during 2023/24, an increase of 13% over the prior year,
partially attributed to increased media focus on the
sector.
During the year we completed 490 much needed
new affordable homes and now own or manage over 26,000 homes across
the North West and South Yorkshire. This is supported
by our second Strategic Partnership with Homes England which will
deliver 4500 new, affordable homes by March 2028 using £269m of
grant funding. At the end of March 2024 Great Places had
around 2,000 new homes on site being built, including 925
affordable homes started during 2023/24.
As a profit for purpose organisation, we ensure
that all our surpluses are invested in line with our values and to
meet our vision of "Great Homes, Great People, Great
Communities".
The Financial Statements for Great Places are
available on our website at:
https://www.greatplaces.org.uk/about-us/corporate-and-investor-information/financial-accounts