About Helena Housing...
Helena Housing is a housing association with 13,500 homes in St Helens, Merseyside. It started life in July 2002 when St Helens Council transferred its council house stock into the company’s ownership following a successful ballot of its tenants. Its Board of Directors is voluntary and comprises four local councillors, four tenants and four independent board members. The company employs over 550 people including a 150 strong team of trades people in its building services division.
The company is a not for profit registered social landlord, regulated by the Housing Corporation. It is committed to delivering the promises it made to tenants prior to transfer and providing quality homes, quality services and quality communities.
One of our primary purposes is to bring all of our homes up the decent homes standard by 2009 and we are currently delivering an ambitious £270 million programme of improvements across our housing stock. We have forged successful partnerships with a number of construction contractors and have recently won a national “In Business” award for “Partner of Choice”. One of our key partners, Mansell Construction, has also been recognised nationally for its successful partnership with Helena Housing. We are members of Fusion 21, an award winning Merseyside based initiative which seeks to ensure efficiency in the procurement of construction materials and services.
In our first five years we have set out the company’s vision for the future which is to be an innovative and well respected housing company working with our tenants, our employees and our partners to provide modern homes and services in thriving neighbourhoods. We are working hard to make this vision a reality and have made significant progress in establishing our reputation locally, regionally and nationally. We have been recognised by our regulators, the Housing Corporation, as being well governed, well managed and financially viable. We work closely with our funders, a consortium led by the Royal Bank of Scotland, to ensure that we operate within the covenants of our funding agreement and deliver the business plan agreed with them.
As a major player in the regeneration of St Helens, we play a significant role in the borough’s local strategic partnership. We contribute to local initiatives on homelessness, crime and disorder, health, and employment. We have set out our own regeneration strategy to identify our priorities in this area and ensure that they are consistent with local community priorities. Our regeneration strategy identifies promoting health, providing better services for older people and engaging young people as its priorities to bring about lasting benefits to local communities and neighbourhoods.
We are adopters of the National Housing Federation “In Business for Neighbourhoods” initiative which aims to shift traditional perceptions of the role of housing associations like ours as providers of bricks and mortar. Although investment in our housing stock is vital for our longer term viability, we are working to ensure sustainability of our estates through our neighbourhood action plans which identify local priorities for action and include initiatives that promote health, tackle crime and nuisance and deal with environmental issues. One way of achieving sustainability is to ensure that people living in the area are economically active and we promote this through our lettings policies, providing training and employment opportunities and encouraging the use of spare land for private housebuilding.
During our first five years, the number of homes we manage has fallen due to our tenants exercising their right to buy their properties from us and the demolition of a number of properties that are no longer viable. Falling stock numbers present us with significant challenges, not least because our access to capital grant funding is limited. St Helens is not considered to be a priority area for such funding. We therefore need to seek more creative opportunities to make the best use of our strategic landholdings, our financial strength and our track record to build new homes. We believe the company has a key role to play in the development of a housing strategy for St Helens and in meeting future demand in an area where demand is buoyant and price increases steep.
We are working closely with St Helens Council to ensure demand for housing schemes for older people is met. We have identified services for older people as one of our key priorities and aim to dedicate more resources to this in the future. As well as investing in our existing schemes for older people, we are keen to ensure that future demand is met by building new, specially designed homes where we can.
As we move forward into the next phase of our development, we will continue to respond to the challenges we face by taking advantage of opportunities for growth and development. We have responded to the efficiency imperative by carrying out an organisation-wide review of how our services are delivered, reviewing our processes and listening to customers about their priorities. This has helped us free up the resources we need to deliver better neighbourhood services, dedicate additional resources to services for older people and create capacity within the organisation to develop new initiatives.
Our priorities as we move forward are:
- Working with our partners, including St Helens Council, to make best use of the land we own across St Helens and provide new homes if we can;
- Work with older people to provide homes and services that better meet their needs;
- Identify future markets for our homes and services and take advantage of opportunities to grow our business.
Click here to find out more about our Board of Directors>
Click here to go to the top of this page>