Improving our communities

Our residents are at the heart of what we do, which is why our community engagement work is so important to us. With the effects of the cost-of-living crisis still being felt, in 2023/24 we invested almost £600k to support those who may need a bit of extra help.

Supporting residents with money worries

Our Welfare Fund – which we set up in 2020 to provide financial support to those worst affected by the Covid-19 pandemic – has continued to help those most in need during the current cost-of-living crisis. In 2023 this grant increased from £102k to £205k so we could provide even more support to those that need it. 

Our brilliant team of Financial Inclusion Officers supported our customers by providing money advice and food vouchers, as well as ensuring residents were receiving all the benefits they were entitled to. We continue to have a strong partnership with Citizens Advice Watford on our ‘Your Money Matters’ project, which means that Watford Community Housing residents are able to benefit from their tailored, expert money advice.  

We have also maintained our commitment to the National Housing Federation's ‘eviction pledge’, which offers residents the reassurance that no one will be evicted from their home as a result of financial hardship, as long as they are working with us to get their payments back on track. 

In 2023 we began a new lunch club in our Leavesden Green Community Hub which offered free hot meals. This had a huge impact, as some diners told us that this was likely to be the only hot meal they had each week – or might even be only time they leave their house. 

We also supported two cost-of-living events at the Holywell and Meriden with Citizens Advice Watford, we distributed 130 Warm in Winter bags from Small Acts of Kindness to residents over winter, we held a week of free school uniform pop-up shops, and we distributed £2,000 worth of Asda vouchers to make sure residents would be able to buy a Christmas dinner. 

Working with our partners

In our 2020-25 Business Plan, we committed to investing £1 million into community projects across the five-year period of the plan. We continue to support our Nifty (over) Fifty group, Solo Stars, our seven tenant and residents’ associations and many more groups and projects that have a positive impact on physical wellbeing, mental health and social isolation.

For the second year running, we were part of a great project that aimed to help families in the Meriden area cook healthy meals on a budget – working alongside local partners Watford Borough Council, Watford FC Community Sports & Education Trust, Random Café, Meriden Residents’ Association and Beezee Bodies. 

During the winter, we worked with Watford Borough Council to reintroduce a series of ‘welcoming spaces’ across our community hubs and independent living facilities. These safe spaces offered not only a great place to socialise and meet new people, but also a lifeline for people that may have been struggling with ever-increasing heating bills. 

We worked in partnership with Hertfordshire County Council’s Children’s Services, Watford Borough Council, and Three Rivers District Council to ensure that we took a ‘collecting with care’ approach, helping residents sustain their tenancies. In 2022 we pledged to only use eviction due to rent arrears as a last resort – as a result we have seen more customers engaging with us to improve their financial situation. 

Involving our residents

As a Community Gateway housing association, our residents have a huge impact on our decision-making. We listen to the voices of our residents in many ways, including through Tenant Question Time events (TQTs) and scrutiny sprints. TQTs allow residents to ask their questions directly to a panel of staff. In 2023/24 the topics covered were ‘finding the right sized home’, ‘communication with our repairs contractors’ and a special session which was held before our annual general meeting (AGM).

We also held two ‘scrutiny sprint’ sessions – which involves customers spending a day with our staff getting a ‘deep dive’ into the subject matter covered in the TQTs. You can read more about the improvements that were made based on feedback from the scrutiny sessions in the Performance section of this report. 

To ensure that we are listening to the needs of all our customers, we began holding dedicated leaseholder and shared owner sessions to discuss upcoming major works, service charges and defect management, and to answer any questions customers had about the services we provide.  

Supporting older residents

We recently relaunched our ‘Independent Living Action Group’ which is made up of a group of tenants from our Independent Living and flexicare schemes. This group is a great way for residents to let us know what service areas are most important to them and how we can continue to improve our offering, and also helps to create a sense of community between all our schemes. 

We also sent out a survey in February to get feedback on what service improvements they would like to see.

Erosh – an independent, nationwide organisation that evaluates older people’s housing – awarded us the Independent Living Standards accreditation, which demonstrates the brilliant work our teams do to provide accessible, affordable and inclusive services to our residents.