Welcome
Ian Munro
Board Chair
I’m pleased to introduce Bolton at Home’s latest annual report.
This has been another year filled with challenges, but the board is delighted by the organisation’s dedication to ensuring we provide safe and healthy homes and supporting customers with tackling the impact of the cost of living crisis.
The changing environment brings both challenges and opportunities. Regulatory reform, including focusing on damp and mould, are areas that Bolton at Home has been addressing head on and you can read more in this report.
We know the organisation is committed to delivering good quality services and the board especially wants to thank you, our tenants, for sharing your feedback and concerns. We use your valuable views and experiences to introduce improvements to services.
As well as listening, the organisation provides several ways for you have your say on how it operates. Your involvement matters and shapes services. Thank you to everyone who’s taken the time to get involved to make a difference.
Looking forward, we’re confident in Bolton at Home’s plans to provide secure homes that meet your needs, support communities, ensure responsible business growth and develops our team to ensure we deliver quality services.
Noel Sharpe
CEO
Welcome to our annual report. I hope this finds you well.
We’ve continued to work hard over the last year to do what we can to give more people a quality and affordable home and offer support services to help people have happy and fulfilling lives.
Our biggest priority has been to catch up on repairs that tenants have been waiting for. I’m pleased to say we’ve made good progress but also accept there is more for us to do.
The past few years have brought many challenges for organisations likes ours. So, we’ve had to change how we do some important things like repairs and maintenance. Most of our work and money goes into fixing or improving things to keep homes in good condition, so we need to make sure we’re investing money wisely.
Lots of people across the region desperately need a more affordable home with providers like us and we can get hundreds of applicants for a property that we advertise. So, it's particularly important that we build new homes and make empty homes available again. Not all empty properties can be turned around quickly though. Many require investment and time to bring them back up to a lettable standard so they’re comfortable to live in for new tenants. Please be assured that we work hard and take every opportunity to make more homes available to rent as well as prioritising investment relating to health and safety, damp and mould, and day to day repairs.
We also offer a wide range of services and support that help people enjoy their home and live well. Especially now, with everything costing more, being more than a landlord is incredibly important. I hope this annual report gives you a good overview of what we do across the organisation and, most importantly, the different ways we can help if you need it.
Thank you to all our customers, teams, partners, governance members and volunteers for all your contributions to our service delivery over the last year- there’s more progress on the way.