Rykneld Homes is responsible for the management, maintenance and improvement of properties and neighbourhoods in North East Derbyshire

Rykneld Homes Ltd manages around 7,600 social properties across North East Derbyshire. Our footprint contains four towns, with surrounding rural areas, with housing stock dispersed between the towns and villages.

Rykneld Homes is based near Chesterfield and is wholly owned by North East Derbyshire District Council. We are one of the largest employers in the district. We have a board of directors, including independent appointed individuals, council-appointed directors, and an independent chair.

Rykneld Homes was established in 2007, registering with the Regulator of Social Housing in 2013 in order to start developing, acquiring, and building our own housing. We now own 140 properties (including shared ownership) as a Registered Provider of Social Housing.

Aims & Goals
Our fundamental objective over coming years is to provide more affordable housing: we have set ourselves a target of delivering 400 homes by 2027. It’s ambitious, but we believe it’s achievable.

We’ll build, buy back, and acquire homes – ensuring they meet the safe and high standards required for social housing. To date, 276 approved homes have been gained through new build projects, buybacks and S106 acquisitions.

We have recently become a Homes England (HE) developer partner. Securing this status will enable future developments and acquisitions, which meet the capital funding guide, to be supported by grant funding.

We’ve pledged to provide sustainable and environmentally friendly developments, using new technologies wherever possible to continue driving down our carbon footprint.

We’re seeing an increase in the number of people applying for housing and we want to support them to have a safe and decent home. But it’s equally important to look after and improve the homes we already have, as well as supporting the people who live in them.

Collaboration is key to achieving our goals and we’ll continue to work closely with our parent Council and all our community partners.

Our performance across all service areas is strong, particularly in relation to customer health and safety. For example, in response to the Housing Regulator and Ombudsman, we have established a specialist team to quickly respond to any reports of damp and mould in properties.

We have a sound knowledge of our housing stock, with a rolling programme of stock condition surveys. This enables us to make informed investment decisions while keeping our homes safe and decent.

Our dedicated and knowledgeable staff are committed to providing excellent services, listening to our customers’ needs, and offering support and advice where needed.

Tenant Wellbeing & Engagement?

Enhancing residents’ quality of life is fundamental to Rykneld Homes. Our vision is ‘To be the best housing provider for our communities’, while our mission is ‘Putting our customers at the heart of everything we do’.

It’s why Building Sustainable Communities is one of our four strategic objectives. We view Sustainable Communities as being about strengthening community engagement. In doing that, we are building communities that are engaged, valued, and places where our customers enjoy spending time.

Communities in North East Derbyshire experience higher-than-average levels of deprivation and poverty. For example, the Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) shows there are six areas in our district that fall within the most 10% deprived areas across England.

Rykneld Homes uses data and statistics from deprivation, crime, health, education, skills, employment, and housing to formulate plans to tackle those inequalities.

As such, our Sustainable Communities strategy means actively going into our communities to either support existing community projects and groups, or where there is a need, to establish new ones.

Projects are varied, but key themes supported under the Sustainable Communities strategy include:

• Improving people’s health (both physical and mental)
• Bringing the community together and reducing social isolation
• Improving opportunities for children and young people
• Enhancing the environment
• Tackling unemployment
• Reducing anti-social behaviour
• Encouraging volunteering.

We provided approximately 270 hours of community engagement in 2023/24, reaching 3,692 people. In March, our Community Involvement Team won the prize for Best Use of an EEM Charitable Donation at the Building Communities Awards 2024. The award recognised the variety of activities on offer in our communities and the reach of our programme.

Our Annual Tenant Satisfaction Survey shapes our strategy and thinking at all levels of the organisation. The response rate is good and we are in the process of verifying the data of the 2023/24 survey.

Major Projects

We are consistently improving our existing homes. It’s a huge part of what we do.

Since 2010, we have undertaken structural repairs and installed External Wall Insulation (EWI) to more than 2,100 non-traditional construction homes with a further 345 planned.

In April 2023 we started work on a two-year programme to deliver EWI and other works to 640 council homes, with the support of £8.2m from the Government’s Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF).

Further investment from the Council, together with further external funding opportunities, will allow this type of work to continue through to 2027 for other homes in the district.

This award-winning work has delivered significant carbon reductions, improved the EPC ratings and thermal comfort of homes and reduced the risk of fuel poverty in the district.

This supports the ongoing long-term programme to regenerate the Council’s non-traditional housing which forms approximately 40% of the stock.

There is a combined total of £21m being invested in the Council’s hardest to treat homes. The Council has committed £13m through the HRA to the project. This is a two-year programme with the external funding to be spent by March 2025, with works to be fully completed by September 2025.

Our work in collaboration with Sustainable Building Services UK (SBS) is one of the largest, most successful solid-wall SHDF Wave 2-funded schemes in the country – already seeing 250 solid-wall properties complete.

We are also working on whole house retrofits and the installation of solar panels to a selected number of homes within the district.

The homes are off the gas network with a range of existing heating systems including solid fuel and electrical storage heaters. Works include, cavity wall insulation, air source heat pumps (Low Carbon Heating, installations, upgraded ventilation and solar PV systems to the roofs.

A further scheme will see 34 homes have external wall insulation installed through the (SHDF) programme as well as the addition of solar panels through devolution funding.

We are also increasing the number of low carbon heating systems being installed in the housing stock and will be seeking further funding through the next wave of SHDF funding.

Through our excellent delivery performance on the SHDF project we were asked to participate in a national learning and feedback event for other recipients of SHDF funding.

We were one of only two providers asked to speak from a total of 107 project delivery teams across the country.

Kitchen and bathroom update and roof replacement schemes are also ongoing across our portfolio.

The Social Housing Act

We welcome the focus of the Social Housing Act – it aligns with our organisational culture and how we operate. We knew change was coming and were pleased to see tenant involvement, improved standards and a focus on taking action form the basis of the new framework.

Making sure our residents have a safe, affordable and decent place to call home is the foundation of our work. So while we, like others, will need to make some adaptations to the way we do things, we are well placed to do so thanks to our existing processes.

It is our job to:

• Ensure tenants are safe in their homes
• Listen to tenants’ complaints and respond promptly to put things right
• Be accountable to tenants and treat them with fairness and respect
• Know more about the condition of every home and the needs of the people who live in them
• Collect and use data effectively across a range of areas, including repairs.

We are already doing these things, our next steps are to develop and improve our processes. We need to ensure we are accurately capturing what we do and the impact it is having.

Communicating with our tenants and using their voice to shape our policy is something we prioritise. We know how important cultivating purposeful relationships with tenants is. As such, one of our values is transparency – we recognise how important it is to keep our tenants and teams informed.

For example, we recently hosted an Involved Tenants conference with neighbouring housing providers. This was a valuable and insightful event and one of many opportunities for tenants to share their thoughts with us and influence and shape policy.

In anticipation of the changes, we have also been working with the sector leader, Savills, to review and update our stock condition systems, and surveying process.

We’ve recruited and trained a team of new stock condition surveyors, who will also be providing EPCs. This will enable us to develop an EPC rating for our stock – data which will be key to informing future spending decisions.

Completing the full stock condition survey of our housing stock by summer 2027 will also enable us to annually update our 30-year investment and major works programmes.

Data Management & AI Software

Every year we carry out more than 30,000 repairs, making sure our customers’ homes are safe and decent.

Our specialist property services teams are high performing and efficient. The use of the latest mobile technology and our supply chain management means customers receive an excellent repairs service that continues to meet performance targets.

This is all software-led.

Our contact centre is key to the way we provide repairs as they not only answer calls and log repairs, but they deliver a diagnostic and advisory service. This ensures the right repair is logged and appointed with the customer as efficiently as possible.

We are in the process of reviewing our Repairs Policy. Tenant voices will again help shape the service. We are currently testing new repairs targets for emergency, urgent, and routine repairs with the aim to reduce overall response times.

A key part of the Policy Review includes improved financial and performance monitoring to ensure our trade operatives are productive and services can demonstrate value for money.

Article supplied by Niall Clark, deputy managing director and director of customer & strategic partnerships at Rykneld Homes