North East housing association to invest over £1billion by 2024

Thirteen, the largest housing association in the North East, has announced plans to invest over £1billion into improving homes for its existing customers, building new homes, making improvements to neighbourhoods and into the support services it offers for its customers over the next five years.

The news comes as the company launches its new strategic plan for 2019 to 2024, which will also help 2,000 people into training or employment, offer apprenticeships to 300 local residents and aims to secure up to £6million in additional welfare benefits for customers. Its construction investment will also create up to 6,000 jobs in the region.

Ian Wardle, chief executive at Thirteen said “Our customers are at the heart of what we do. Two of our top priorities are delivering quality places to live and a great customer experience. In the past year alone, we have invested £31m into improving our neighbourhoods, £29m into developing new homes and carried out over 150,000 repairs as part of an ongoing programme.

“We will now deliver a £1billion investment over the next five years to improve our customer’s homes, their local neighbourhoods and their services, as well as delivering new affordable homes. We will continue to listen to our customers and improve what we do face-to-face and online.

“Our ambitious construction plans will create thousands of jobs and hundreds of apprenticeship opportunities that will benefit local people. It’s a very exciting time for us, our customers and for the region as a whole.”

Thirteen customer and chair of the company’s customer engagement group, Val Scollen, said: “I’ve been a Thirteen customer for 19 years and have seen the difference the company has already made to neighbourhoods from the bigger, more visible things like building new houses and upgrading existing homes to giving funding to community groups or helping customers in all sorts of other ways from adaptations and money advice to training and employment opportunities.

“This investment plan is great news for us as customers, showing that Thirteen is as committed as ever to providing quality homes, neighbourhoods and a high level of support that goes way beyond just being a landlord.”

Between 2019 and 2024, Thirteen is investing:

• £411m into improvements to up to 20,000 existing homes as part of an ongoing programme. This includes new roofs, kitchens, bathrooms, windows, doors and energy efficient boilers, with £5m of it for a variety of home adaptations to help older people stay in their own homes for longer
• £393m to build 3,000 affordable and shared ownership homes, including £58m to build 700 new independent living places for people with specialist needs
•  £159m into Thirteen services to support neighbourhoods and into neighbourhood improvements, following a number of successful pilot schemes. This includes employment and training initiatives for young people, money advice and help for people in crisis
• £59m to build 298 market sale homes, with profit reinvested back into its social purpose

The investment will create up to 6,000 jobs from construction investment and 300 apprenticeships for local people and by 2024, Thirteen aims to have 37,000 properties.

The organisation has created an area on its website dedicated to providing customers and other stakeholders with updates on some of the key projects and schemes that fall within the £1billion investment plans at www.thirteengroup.co.uk/billion