Value for Money (VfM)

As a community landlord, achieving Value for Money (VfM) is a key driver for how we deliver our services, work with our partners and getting the most from every pound we spend.

We aim to deliver high quality services as efficiently and effectively as we can, maximising the value of those services with the money we have available to us. Ensuring we achieve VfM is of increasing importance to us during a time when costs are dramatically rising, both for us as a business and our customers.

Here we highlight our key VfM figures. Throughout this report you can also see more about our funding, income and costs. Just look for this descriptor: "VfM"

How we spend your rent money

As a not-for-profit charity, income collected from rents is invested into the homes and services we provide for customers. The table below shows a breakdown of how we have spent every £1 over the year:

Routine Maintenance	19p
Major Repairs	36p
Neighbourhood and tenancy services	8p
Routine Servicing (Health and Safety)	6p
Customer Services	4p
Finance and other costs	27p

"VfM"

£609k surplus remaining at the end of the year

"What does this mean?"

At the end of each year, we don’t keep the profits from any income that has not been spent. Instead, anything remaining (the surplus) is invested back into homes and services for the upcoming year.

"Customer Voice"

Each year, as part of our Governance structure, customers play a role in helping us to prioritise spending where it is most needed. This includes the rent setting consultation each year; customers work with us to understand costs and income and how we can explain this to our customers.

Regulator of Social Housing Key Measures 2023

As a community landlord, Value for Money (VfM) is a key driver and is integral to our culture and everything that we do. We work closely with our Customer Board Partnership and Scrutiny Panel to deliver VfM targets to meet the objectives in our Corporate Plan. We aim to deliver a high-quality service as efficiently and effectively as we can.

As a housing provider, we are subject to regulation put in place by our regulator, The Regulator of Social Housing (RSH). They have identified seven key measures to see how well we are performing.

The RSH releases the sector median, which is the industry average across all providers from the previous year. This gives landlords like us the opportunity to show how we measure up against the housing sector, as well as be able to set our own targets against these averages in an informed way. The sector median is based on an average of performance from the previous year, so you will note below that these have earlier dates than our own targets and actual performance data, which is for the year from April 2022 to March 2023.

Below, we have explained each of the seven measures, given the sector median for the previous year, outlined our own target set by our Board this year and given information on whether we have achieved each of the targets set against them.

Measure 1: Headline Social Housing Cost per unit

The Headline Social Housing Cost is the cost of managing and maintaining one property. This is worked out by adding all of our costs across social housing and dividing them by the number of properties we have.

Sector Median (2021/2022)	£4,150
NDH Target (2022/2023)	£3,747
NDH Actual (2022/2023)	£4,300

Measure 2: New Supply

The New Supply measure is the number of new properties we have built in the year, but as a percentage measure across all our properties. So, for example, if we had 100 properties and we built 1 new property, the percentage value would be 1%.

This measure is broken into two – one for social housing and one for non-social housing..

Social Housing

Sector Median (2021/2022)	1.4%
NDH Target (2022/2023)	1.9%
NDH Actual (2022/2023)	0.33%

Non-social Housing

Sector Median (2021/2022)	0.0%
NDH Target (2022/2023)	1.7%
NDH Actual (2022/2023)	0.7%

Measure 3: Reinvestment

The Reinvestment measure is the percentage of investment that we put back into building new homes or maintaining our existing homes. The percentage comes from calculating the value against the total value of all the homes we own. So, for example, if we said our entire housing stock was valued at £100 and we spent £1 on either building or maintaining homes, the percentage value would be 1%.

Sector Median (2021/2022)	6.5%
NDH Target (2022/2023)	6.0%
NDH Actual (2022/2023)	3.25%

Measure 4: Gearing

Gearing is the amount of debt we have as a company. The percentage comes from calculating the total value of our homes compared to how much is debt. So, for example, if we said all our housing stock was valued at £100 and we had £50 in debts, the percentage value would be 50%.

Sector Median (2021/2022)	44.1%
NDH Target (2022/2023)	60.5%
NDH Actual (2022/2023)	56.8%

Measure 5: Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation - major repairs included (EBITDA MRI)

This measure is to show how much financial capacity we have to invest as a company. For example, if we said as a company we had £100, but £50 of that was in the value of our homes, we would have £50 cash value to invest in services, so the percentage value would be 50%.

Sector Median (2021/2022)	145.7%
NDH Target (2022/2023)	141.9%
NDH Actual (2022/2023)	82.2%

Measure 6: Operating Margin

The Operating Margin measure is here to show a company’s surplus over the year. The surplus is the amount of money made that hasn't been spent after all the expenses have been accounted for. This would most commonly be referred to as profit but, as we are a not-for-profit company and we make none, this is referred to as surplus which is then reinvested in the next year's finances. The percentage is based on the total income and how much was spent. So, for example, if we had £100 income from rent money and funding in the year, and we spent £75 in the year, our percentage value of surplus would be 25%.

This measure is broken into two - one for social housing and one for overall performance.