Financial Statements to March 2024

Great Places Housing Group Limited

27 September 2024

 

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 1^st 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

 

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