Published:
12:00 AM April 25, 2022
We are delighted to contribute a regular column in the North Devon Gazette to give our local communities an insight to the work we do here at North Devon Homes.
Did you know 1 in 10 people across our districts live in a North Devon Homes property?
We serve nearly 3,500 properties in the area, working closely together as an independent social landlord, providing services and homes for local people that need them. We are an organisation that’s committed to working together to tackle the housing crisis and the stigma of social housing.
We work all across North Devon and our staff and apprentices are all based here. We contribute over £20m into the local economy and employ 150 local people delivering services to our communities.
There is a huge need for more housing in all tenures across Northern Devon and grants for building new homes have become increasingly difficult to get across the country. We are proud that, back in 2015, we set up Anchorwood Ltd as a subsidiary business to enable us to build homes that could be sold on the open market and 100% of the profits we receive from the sales of these homes is then directly invested into providing more affordable housing across the area.
This is really beginning to take shape and Anchorwood has so far funded the building of 37 new affordable homes for local people. Once completed, our development at Taw Wharf will pay for a further 100 new affordable homes across Northern Devon. Our Regeneration and Development Team are working on future projects for delivering more homes across North Devon and Torridge. Watch this space!
As well as providing more homes, the continued maintenance and upgrading of our existing homes is a vital part of our work. From planned improvements, repairs and servicing to regenerating entire communities – our teams work hard to ensure our customer’s homes are warm, safe and secure.
In the launch of our corporate plan, last year, we set out our pledge to reducing our carbon footprint as we work towards a net zero future. In our work towards providing more energy efficient upgrades to our housing stock, we recently celebrated our 100th energy efficient boiler replacement.
Working closely with our communities and our residents is as the heart of what we do. From helping customers to manage their finances, form filling and independent living to our community clear up days, customer focus groups and organising social events – our teams specialise in helping our customers to manage healthy tenancies.
We recognise that people are really struggling with hardship at the moment with the impact of housing crisis and increases in energy prices and inflation. We are working to be part of the solution through these challenges and, as always, we encourage any of our customers who are struggling to get in contact with us.
With pandemic restrictions cancelling many of our social events for the last two years, we are thrilled these are back up and running. These groups are a lifeline to many of our customers and help to combat loneliness, so it’s great to hear voices and laughter in our communal areas once again.
We are also excited that our Summer Fayre is returning this year after a two-year pause. This event for our residents is a day we always look forward to and is made possible thanks to our incredible sponsors and partners – it really is a community-led event. Not only is it a fun, family day but it is the chance for us and our customers to chat in a more informal setting…even if it does mean I am the target in the wet sponge throwing competition!
Our vision as Team NDH is working together to create communities where people want to live. We are looking forward to sharing more details of the work our teams do in our future columns.
Martyn Gimber
– Credit: North Devon Homes
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