annual report 2024/25

I’m really pleased to present our Annual Report, which highlights our work during 2024/25.

We are driven by our purpose to improve customers’ lives by providing healthy and affordable homes and enhancing our communities. This year, believe housing unveiled an ambitious new Corporate Plan, which outlines how we will deliver excellence for our customers, be a great place to work and be financially secure and well governed.

Over the last year, our dedicated colleagues have been committed to improving our existing homes, as well as building new ones, supporting customers with welfare benefits, accessing employment and training, and investing in our communities. This is all against a very challenging backdrop that is impacting both people and businesses, with high inflation, rising costs and energy prices and the ongoing impact of the cost-of-living crisis.

Earlier this year we asked our customers what they wanted us to cover in the Annual Report. You asked for details around our repairs service, complaints, how we make sure you are safe in your home, and how we communicate with you. Hearing what our customers think is important to us, and we encourage you to provide feedback so we can continue to improve our services. We’ve also included details of your satisfaction with the services we provide, the work we are doing in our community and how we ensure value for money.

Looking back to see how our services have performed across 2024-2025, it’s clear to see that our work is much broader than bricks and mortar. We’re really proud of the work we are doing to support our customers live a life without barriers and below you can find key information on how we have performed during the last year.

Alan Smith
Chief Executive

Assets and investments

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541

fire-stopping actions

4,838

stock condition surveys completed

256

properties retrofitted through environmental works

458

boiler and heating upgrades

513

external and environmental improvements

305

kitchens fitted

bathrooms fitted

1/7

Complaints

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7.87

working days on average to respond to a Stage 1 complaint

18.64

working days on average to respond to a Stage 2 complaint

799

out of 852 complaints responded to within timescales

93.26%

of complaints responded to within timescales at stage 1

96.42%

of complaints responded to within timescales at stage 2

Housing Ombudsman determinations

33.6%

satisfaction with how complaints were handled

Top two

areas of complaints where were responsive repairs (52.5%) and cyclical repairs (16%)

1/8

Customer contact

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193,096

calls answered by the customer hub

20,058

e-mails received by the customer hub

61.7%

of calls resolved at first point of contact

1/3

Customer satisfaction

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82%

of customers satisfied with safety in their home

75.6%

of customers satisfied that homes are well maintained

75.9%

of customers believe we keep customers informed about things that matter most

83.1%

of customers believe we treat customers fairly and with respect

75.7%

of customers satisfied with repairs

73.6%

of customers satisfied with most recent repair

69.3%

of customers think we listen to customers’ views and act upon them

1/7

Development

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208

homes completed across 12 different sites

92.6%

of new build customers likely to recommend us to a family or friend

1/2

Engaging with customers

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4,886

customers took part in a telephone survey

1,748

customers answered our tenant perception survey

1,431

customers completed an online survey

8,207

customers provided us with other feedback on our activity

126

customers attended 14 focus groups

customers attended one community engagement event around no access

1/6

How we spend our money

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£31.4m

spent on improving existing homes

£27.4m

spent on repairs and maintenance of customers’ homes

£25m

spent acquiring and developing new homes

£35.6m

spent on wages and salary employing over 600 people across the North East

£8.1m

spent on decarbonisation and environmental improvements to make homes warmer and more energy efficient

£934k

spent on adapting homes to meet the needs of our customers

£624k

spent on developing our digital services

1/7

Lettings

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2,958

joined the housing register out of 8,515 applications through Durham Key Options

65,609

bids placed on properties overall

1,411

new tenancies

1,247

relets to existing customers

133

first lets to new customers

Rent to Buy tenancies

1/6

Neighbourhoods

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71.1%

of customers believe we make a positive contribution to neighbourhoods

75.2%

of customers believe we keep communal areas clean, safe and well-maintained

1/2

Repairing and maintaining homes

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90,215

repairs completed up from 74,567 in 2023/2024

87.06%

satisfaction with repairs or 4.4 out of 5

14.8

days to complete repairs

91.29%

of repairs completed within timescales

87.22%

of repairs completed first time

99.98%

of gas servicing completed on customers’ homes

100%

compliance of electrical safety checks

633

damp and mould works carried out to customers’ homes

1/8

Safer neighbourhoods

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63%

of customers satisfied with our handling of antisocial behaviour

860

antisocial behaviour cases opened

125

antisocial behaviour cases where we took legal action

881

antisocial behaviour cases where closed

1/4

Supporting our communities

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£267,761

awarded in community funding

£8,505,861.40

social value created by our community funding

1/2

Grants awarded to organisations or community groups:

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grants of £500

grants of £1,000

grants of £10,000

grants of £20,000

1/4

Supporting our customers

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£1,894,099.63

received in welfare benefits by customers through our support

£20.480

in heat and eat vouchers issued

133

people supported into employment

£34,650.23

of energy vouchers issued to customers

customers joined the business through New Start

people supported to access volunteering opportunities

1/6

Service standards

There are a total of 48 service standards agreed with our customers across 10 key themes of the business:

Communication and information.
Complaints and feedback.
Finding a home.
Paying your rent.
Living in your neighbourhood.
Repairs and maintenance.
Safety in your home.
Supporting our customers.
Engagement and community investment.
New build homes.

During 2024/25 performance against the 48 standards was reported as follows:

Compliance	Description
0 standards	Non-compliance
Five standards	Partial compliance
0 standard	Compliance with improvement work needed
43 standards	Full compliance

Areas for improvement

The standards that require further improvement work are highlighted in the table below:

Standard	Summary and actions to improve
Ensure that information we provide to you is clear, concise and jargon-free.	New brand guidelines are to be introduced following a refresh that covers both use of logo and our tone of voice. A language accessibility project to be introduced. In the meantime, teams are utilising software via Microsoft Copilot to ensure our language is clear.
Provide information that is easily accessible.	A new emarketing platform has been introduced for mass customer and stakeholder emails.
Provide information that is easily accessible.	Social media channels have been reviewed and now include Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok.
Ensure your home meets all health and safety regulations including fire safety, gas safety, electrical safety and legionella.	At the end of the year a total of 1,070 fire risk assessment actions had been closed and four were overdue. Three of these have been subsequently closed and work is currently underway to complete the final one.
	At the end of the year 2024/25 , 87 fire door inspections were overdue. All overdue doors were due to no access and were being escalated, or required a new door that was being manufactured. These can often be complicated and require specialist design and contractors to carry out, which can lead to additional time for the action to be closed.
	A specialist contractor has been utilised to provide inspections during the year to try and keep the overdue inspections to a minimum.
	No access is an issue across the sector, so we have established a No Access Working Group to try and support the team, bring new ideas and learning, improve communication with customers, all to see if these have a positive impact.
Ensure your home meets all health and safety regulations including fire safety, gas safety, electrical safety and legionella.	At the end of the year, we reported that 99.98% properties had a valid Landlord Gas Safety Certificate. Three properties remained outstanding while we continued with our no access procedure. We achieved 100% in July 2025.
Identify customers who require additional support and provide a variety of measures tailored to their needs.	We currently do not hold information on all our customers that we can use to identify their additional support needs. Our Vulnerability and Reasonable Adjustment Policy was agreed in December 2024, and training is being delivered during 2025/26. Our new Customer Relationship Management platform, Salesforce, is expected to go live in 2025/2026 with updated vulnerability indicators, showing different support needs and vulnerabilities. We are collecting information on all household members to enable us to provide a tailored service to residents in our homes. We have agreed plans to further enhance our tailored service offer in 2025/2026.
Provide opportunities for you to engage with us, including an annual satisfaction survey and regular customer surveys. And let you know on a regular basis of how customer engagement has improved services.	We post news articles on our website regarding 'you said, we did' and update customers in our Annual Report. We are trailing a six-month feedback newsletter to demonstrate how valuable our engaged customers are . We have also introduced a feedback tracker to capture what improvements have been made based on feedback from customers. New brand guidelines are to be introduced, as is a language accessibility project and we will start to collect information on customers preferred contact methods to help tailor our messages to them.

We also recognise that how we handle complaints is very important to our customers. We are required to self-assess against the Housing Ombudsman Code to ensure we are handling complaints fairly and effectively and publish this information on-line for our customers. This can be found here:

housing ombudsman complaint handling code: self-assessment form | believe housing