The past year has continued to present challenging circumstances for many businesses including Coastal as well as for the communities in which we work. The ongoing impact of the Coronavirus pandemic, removal of the Universal Credit uplift, alongside rising National Insurance, inflation, energy and fuel costs have each contributed to significant difficulties for many of the people who rent homes from Coastal.
The biggest cost of living crisis for a generation brings with it increased demand for Coastal’s services as well as a responsibility to ensure the homes we offer are truly affordable and as energy efficient as possible; a responsibility shared across both our development programme and our existing housing stock.
Against this backdrop, the group's financial performance over the past 12 months has been very strong and is illustrative of a well-managed, responsive organisation with a collective focus on providing value for money. The growth in income includes sales of homes developed for market sale and low-cost home ownership.
Our development programme continued at pace last year, delivering 124 new homes for rent and for sale, with a further 7 acquired through the Welsh Housing Partnership. This was achieved alongside a restructuring of our development team to ensure we have the skills and structure to meet future challenges and ambitions. Led by Kelly Thomas, Executive Director of Development & Regeneration, the new development team is now fully in place.
In what is a fast-moving and competitive employment market, we were delighted to retain existing talent through the restructure in addition to securing new hires with excellent experience and who share Coastal’s values.
Of particular note in our 2021/22 development programme was the completion of 2 builds funded through Welsh Government’s Innovative Housing Programme (IHP): eco-homes utilising local skills and materials with Down to Earth in Pennard, Gower and the UK’s first low-carbon modular homes from Daiwa House Modular Europe at Coed Darcy in Neath. Both of these developments exemplify our commitment to exploring approaches to low or zero carbon development that reduce the overall cost of running a home for future residents.
The planned Gwynfaen project to deliver 144 low-carbon homes with Pobl Group in Penyrheol, Swansea was also part-funded through the Innovative Housing Programme. Originally scheduled for a start in Summer 2020, the scheme has been significantly delayed due to factors including the Coronavirus pandemic. Over the last 6 months, significant work has been undertaken between the partners and Welsh Government to allow the development to move forward in future as a Pobl development, allowing Coastal to focus on a range of other eco-home projects such as those mentioned above.
A challenging operating environment for the construction sector led to Welsh Government creating the material cost increase programme: a package of support for contractors working on grant-related developments, based on match-funding from developing associations like Coastal. We were able to offer support to contractors on 4 of our developments in phase 1 of the programme, providing almost £900,000 to help contractors manage increased costs associated with the continued disruption of Covid-19 throughout 2021/22.
Coastal's development work contributes significant social value over and above meeting existing housing need or regeneration. On average, every £1 Coastal spends on construction contracts generates £1.88 in the local economy. We also operate targeted recruitment and training initiatives that create local employment opportunities and a separate community benefit programme that offers both financial investment and in-kind support to community groups located in areas where Coastal is actively developing.
In late 2021 Coastal was approached by Wales & West Housing Association to bid for 96 of its homes in the Caswell and Dunvant areas of Swansea, following a stock rationalisation exercise. Having evaluated the opportunity thoroughly, Coastal put forward a bid document in early February and were delighted to be informed within the month that, despite stiff competition, Wales & West Housing’s board had ultimately chosen to accept Coastal’s offer on the basis of our “comprehensive and well-written” bid. Engagement with existing Wales & West Housing residents to introduce Coastal and explain the process took place throughout spring and summer and the transfer completed in early September.
Pennant Homes is a subsidiary of Coastal that undertakes all of its homes for sale activity. This includes the development of new homes for sale, currently across a geographical area spanning Bridgend to Carmarthenshire.
The past year has seen the successful, ongoing development of Colman Vale in Pen y Fai, Bridgend; offering 4 and 5 bedroom executive homes, this desirable development is now nearing completion. Pennant Homes has also worked closely with Coastal to sell a beautiful range of homes in Pennard, Gower. The Hedgerows development includes new homes for market sale as well as a number of low-cost home ownership homes, all of which are available exclusively to purchasers with a local connection to the area. In keeping with Pennant Homes’ values as part of Coastal, our low-cost home ownership scheme has been available at both developments.
The demand for affordable homes continues to grow and in the past year we were delighted to help 10 people buy their first homes and assist 11 more to either increase their equity share to 100% or sell their property on.
Coastal is committed to providing homes that are safe and secure; following the Grenfell investigation, we acted quickly to understand the impact this could have for any affected buildings. After surveys and off-site testing, we determined that the combination of cladding and insulation used on around 20% of our Strand Court building in central Swansea was no longer suitable owing to changes in government advice for buildings over 18 metres in height.
Following consultation with residents, remedial works began in April 2021 with support from Welsh Government’s High-Rise Residential Buildings (HRRB) Capital Remediation Grant. Owing to our commitment to resident safety, we also took the decision to replace cladding and insulation to the smaller adjacent building at Strand Mews, with costs for this covered entirely by Coastal. Work was largely completed within the year, with the scaffold removed and site vacated by the contractor during June 2022.
Residents were supported throughout the remediation work by a dedicated liaison officer and we are committed to learning from their experiences through the post-works evaluation.
Many people who rent their home from Coastal have been under significant financial pressures during the Coronavirus pandemic, exacerbated by the removal of the Universal Credit uplift, rising energy price caps, fuel costs and inflation. Building on increased tenancy support activity put in place in the early days of the pandemic, Coastal continues to provide advice, support and signposting to support residents to sustain their tenancies.
In the past year, new online resources have been created to support residents with energy and water costs, as well as accessing the Welsh Government’s Tenancy Hardship Grant. These resources have supplemented in-person contact by our housing, customer service, home adaptations and extra-care teams, who have provided personalised support and signposting based on individual circumstances.
Hearing residents’ views on Coastal and the service they get is incredibly important to us. We invite this feedback regularly through mechanisms such as post-repair satisfaction ratings and consultation on topics like service charges and sustainability. In 2021 we conducted an all-resident survey designed to principles set out by Welsh Government that specifically seek to promote residents' voice in social housing services. The survey was conducted by an experienced external company – Knowledge Partnership - to ensure objectivity and independence. In total, they conducted 2,320 surveys across telephone and web, which represented a 43% response rate from Coastal residents. We were pleased to note that, despite operating in challenging circumstances from March 2020, residents still rated Coastal highly.
Last year the first phase of our new housing management and financial systems went live following a huge effort by the project team and departmental champions across Coastal. By combining Civica’s CX and FinancialsLive solutions, we now have a single, real-time view taking in Coastal’s housing assets, rent payments and arrears. This allows our teams across both housing and finance to quickly identify where support interventions are already, or may soon, become necessary. We are also seeing some of the early expected benefits in terms of efficiency: our rent-setting for 2022/23 took a fraction of the time taken with legacy systems and our manual process for rent debits has now been fully automated.
The right working environment contributes hugely to the way people work and the quality of what’s produced. We knew from ‘Coastal Conversations’ conducted with staff normally based at offices during 2020 that remote working at home was having an impact. It was affecting the creativity and collaboration staff were able to bring to their work, as well as the connections that enabled issues to be progressed quickly and the best outcomes achieved with residents.
Meanwhile, those same conversations with our estates and maintenance teams revealed similar challenges around connection and communication. For these teams, the weekly office catchups they had pre-pandemic were a crucial element in lone-working successfully for the rest of the week and they were sorely missed. To help address this, we created the Coastal Hub and Yard in July 2021 as a drop-in space where people could meet colleagues safely, comfortably and within government rules.
With both indoor and outdoor spaces designed to enable social distancing, the Hub and Yard proved particularly popular with staff during the summer, providing much-needed social connection along with opportunities for many to collaborate on work in-person for the first time since March 2020. In autumn 2021, the Coastal Hub and Yard was shortlisted for a Welsh Housing Award in the Excellence in Health & Wellbeing category.
Sustainability is an important issue for Coastal and one that touches every part of the organisation. Last year we were able to give renewed focus to recognising this and positioning sustainability as a central tenet of our business. To facilitate this, we embarked on the first external sustainability audit in Coastal’s history, delivered by independent specialists, SHIFT Environment.
This step was essential in establishing a baseline we can use to measure future, planned improvements but we were nonetheless delighted to be awarded Silver accreditation as a result. Coastal outperformed 24 of the last 40 organisations audited by SHIFT, winning particular praise for the energy efficiency of its new and existing homes, as well as its work to prevent fuel poverty.
Last year we created the Horizon Fund as a means to help facilitate the changes that local communities want to make for themselves. Linked to the City and County of Swansea’s Crowdfund Swansea movement, our Horizon Fund offers pledges of up to £1,000 or 50% of target for civic improvement projects across the county. Since April 2021 we’ve funded 5 different projects through Horizon, including initiatives to introduce more greenery to urban areas and harvest waste fruit growing locally.
Coastal is working with Welsh Government and local authorities to respond to challenges created by the war in Ukraine. In early March we were also able to contribute to a community response, thanks to the compassion and activism of members of our team. Through local connections, we heard that donated goods needed to be moved from West Cross in Swansea to a sorting hub in Neath, from where they would be loaded onto HGVs to be driven to the Ukrainian-Polish border. Following a request on Coastal’s intranet, a fleet of 8 Coastal vans and employee-owned vehicles was assembled after the working day was done to load, transport and unload thousands of donated products, ensuring they were able to make their onward journey into the hands of arriving refugees.
As the financial year drew to a close in late March, we were pleased to be able to welcome back our popular Learning at Work Week (LAWW) for Team Coastal. A week-long festival of learning and wellbeing activities first held in January 2020, this year’s LAWW was conceived as a hybrid event with sessions taking place both online and at numerous other indoor and outdoor venues across south west Wales. Over 70 sessions ran during the week including keynotes from workplace culture expert Bruce Daisley, Swansea East MP Carolyn Harris, members of Race Council Cymru's 'Windrush Generations' project and local area coordination teams from Swansea and Neath Port Talbot.