Annual Report
last updated
08/04/2010 00:00
Our Values
Openness
We are committed to openness, accountability and integrity in all our business activities.
Respect
We respect diversity and each other and we help our colleagues to deliver their best.
Trust
Our relationships with each other, with tenants and with our partners are built on trust.
Dedicated
Collectively we are dedicated to providing real homes in balanced Highland communities.
Innovative
We have a track record of delivering innovative developments throughout the Highlands.
Sustainability
We deliver long term housing solutions which contribute to community sustainability.
Quality
We strive to deliver a quality service, to build quality homes and to provide best value.
Affordable
We provide a range of housing to ensure that it is affordable to a wide range of people.
Chairperson’s report
WELCOME everyone to Albyn Housing Society’s Annual General Meeting – I have a lot of news to share with you from the past year. Whilst it has been a challenging year for us all it is one in which Albyn has continued to succeed and make progress, as well as address problems.
Our Committee of Management has made significant progress in updating and improving the governance arrangements for Albyn. At the end of the year we were well on the way to registering new rules for the company, and these will be in place by the time you read this. We are probably the first housing association in Scotland to register rules under the new model. Our aims have included developing a governing body which is fit to lead us through what will be a turbulent few years ahead, given the impact of the credit crunch on public sector funding, the supply of private finance and the communities we serve. Next year will see a programme of developing our Committee Members to ensure they are able to deliver further improvement.
Similarly, we have been supporting many of our staff to improve their skills and develop their capabilities. This has included senior managers undergoing Leadership training with the Social Enterprise Academy and many other staff completing Chartered Institute of Housing and similar training programmes.
We have continued to receive very positive feedback from our customers, with another set of encouraging Resident Satisfaction Survey results. And yet we don’t rest on our laurels. At the end of the year we were near to the implementation of joint operational service delivery arrangements, along with Cairn Housing Association, for management and maintenance services for our tenants in Caithness. This will test our capacity to work effectively together, with a view to extending such arrangements to other Highland communities where we both have housing and tenants to serve. Joint service delivery ought to help both Cairn and Albyn to improve the sense of Value for Money to our customers.
Our financial viability is at the heart of managing our way through these turbulent times and delivering the services our tenants rightly expect of us. We have begun an effective process of realising cost savings and continuing to improve our generation of surpluses. Those surpluses are critical in enabling Albyn to maintain the quality of our properties over their lifetime and bringing our older properties up to modern standard, for example in improving the energy efficiency of non-traditional build housing from the 1970s.
We know that a lack of investment in small, rural communities can threaten their capacity to thrive. Our new build development programme has continued to include many such communities, some of which have received new affordable housing investment for the first time in a generation or two. This has been delivered in partnership with the Scottish Government and the Highland Council, as well as other key organisations such as the Highland Small Communities Housing Trust, the Highland Housing Alliance and many suppliers, contractors and consultants.
So, a challenging and successful year, and we look forward to achieving more and continuing to deliver valued services to our tenants and communities in the year ahead.
Ella MacRae, Chairperson, Albyn Housing Society Ltd
Chief Executive’s report
This report shows, once more, the success, investment and valued services that Albyn continues to deliver in the Highlands. Ella MacRae has reported on a number of our bigger changes and achievements over the past year. I wish to take this opportunity to highlight some more achievements and activities from the past year.
We are a charity which reaches into the lives of thousands of households across the Highlands, and that uses large amounts of our own reserves, public grants and private loans to do so. As such, we are all too well aware of the importance of maintaining an effective balance between holding good working relationships with our partners and being able to articulate legitimate concerns when changes are proposed that are likely to make it more difficult to do what we do. During the past year we have taken an active role in the Scottish Government’s proposed changes to funding and delivering the new build programme. This has included joint work with our colleague housing associations across the Highlands, to try and help shape changes that will help to deliver more homes, more efficiently and help highland housing associations flourish.
We have adopted an essentially positive “can do” approach in responding to change. The Committee of Management have made considerable effort in understanding these complex issues and reaching decisions that best serve our customers, partner agencies and make business sense for us. Our Parliamentary reception was part of our wider strategy of trying to influence the political decision making process.
We have, once more, delivered by some way the largest part of the new build programme for the Highlands, assisting both the Scottish Government and the Highland Council to achieve their targets. Our Development staff are due a thank you for pulling this off. Besides delivering large numbers of new rented homes, they have also provided the supply of new shared equity housing to assist new home owners in to the market. Our colleagues in Albyn Enterprises have made a success of selling our and Cairn’s LIFT properties. Often this has seemed to be just about the only bright spot in an understandably gloomy market.
Our housing management allocations staff have managed to perform well, through our key involvement in the still ‘new’ Highland Housing Register and our high level of new and re-let allocations. Their colleagues managing our tenants’ rent accounts had agreed improved account management processes, by the year end. We expect to see the fruits of their labours during 2009/10. This is evidence of our positive response to our regulatory grading, of medium engagement, with the Scottish Housing Regulator.
We have continued to invest in our existing housing stock, through the bathroom replacement contract, which was highly rated by our tenants. With our new Property Maintenance Director, Mr John Clarke, in place we have began more detailed planning for similar future investment to maintain and raise the quality standards of our properties, for the benefit of our tenants.
Even though we get very positive customer satisfaction responses we aim to do better. With our recently developed new approaches to customer service and tenant involvement we aim to take this further.
There are many other successes I could recount and acknowledge. These are recorded in the departmental contributions in the rest of this report. I hope we are able to convey these success stories well and give you confidence in Albyn’s capacity to continue to succeed and deliver for the Highlands.
I wish to record my appreciation of the work of the Committee of Management and all our staff over the past year in helping us to do all that we have done.
Calum Macaulay, Chief Executive, Albyn Housing Society Ltd
The full annual report is available to download from the right hand sidebar.
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