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Value for money

 

Our approach to value for money is guided by our long term corporate priorities. You can find out more about our long term objectives here.

Our value for money goals

1

putting customers at the heart of what we do

  • improving staff efficiency through updating technology and reviewing our ways of working to enhance the customer experience

  • managing our neighbourhoods more effectively by implementing a new action plan created with customers
2

providing homes people want to live in

  • reviewing our repairs service by planning strategically and reviewing our contracts to provide resilient, quality services
  • delivering the Arches Home Standard making sure our homes meet high standards of quality as determined by our residents
3

increasing the number of affordable homes in the Sheffield City Region

  • delivering our growth strategy by building new homes for social housing and shared ownership, meeting a range of housing needs
4

maintaining a sustainable and balanced business model

  • securing funding by sourcing cost-efficient, long-term loans to ensure effective use of resources
  • reviewing procurement to make sure all services are provided with the lowest cost and highest quality possible
5

being a well-run organisation

  • improving staff effectiveness by carrying out job evaluations, improving our HR service and running a leadership programme for all staff

We've identified five key objectives that we think are really important in meeting these corporate priorities, and ensuring our customers are getting the best bang for their buck that we can provide. We measure our success against how well we meet these objectives.

How we performed in 2019/20

  objective indicator performance

costs kept down

ensuring overall costs are kept down

 keep total social housing costs per property (CPU) below peer group median* the overall projected CPU is £3,081 (£428 below peer group median)

piggy bank

producing real-terms savings on central costs

 maintain central costs (general management costs) at the same or reduced level central costs have increased by 4.4% (£97 per property), due to some new properties being delayed in handing over

home improvement

prioritising spend on improving our properties

 maintain major works (kitchens, bathrooms etc) CPU above peer group median our major works CPU is £784 (£83 above peer group median)
new home prioritising spend on new properties add 40 new properties per year to our stock, in line with the Arches Growth Strategy we delivered 31 new homes in 2019/20; 15 anticipated homes were delayed to 2020/21, where the anticipated number of new homes is now 50 
happy keeping customers at the heart of what we do

increase customer satisfaction

 customer satisfaction is currently on 88.55%, 1.55% above target and up from 85.31% last year

 

Our regulatory commitments
The Regulator of Social Housing requires us to meet certain expectations and publish our results. To find out more, click here.

*Our Housemark peer group is other housing associations that are similar to us in terms of things like size and customer group.

For previous value for money reports, please click here.

What went well this year

better ways of working project

We've been working really hard to upgrade our IT infrastructure, resulting in a seamless move to home working during the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant we were able to maintain our services to customers, and saved hundreds of staff hours.
procurement benchmarking

We benchmarked or reprocured 78% of all our business expenditure (things like our service costs and staff salaries) to make sure we're getting the best value and it's reasonable and comparable to other organisations.
big conversation We carried out a large-scale customer feedback exercise called 'The Big Conversation', which told us what's important to our tenants and how we should be directing our spending.

What we're improving

22%

We've benchmarked 78% of our expenditure - now it's time to finish the remaining 22%.
development

We've got more work to do on making sure our development programme delivers value for money.
analysis We're going to carry out a deeper analysis of service costs so we can find more ways to improve.

 

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