Case studies

Improving the experience for residents

We know that doing repairs well is important to residents, so we’re continually looking at ways of improving our service.

On one February day in New Mansion Square, Battersea, we hosted a repairs day. Plumbers, electricians and other handypeople from a range of Peabody contractors, including Milverdene, Gilmartins, PBSL and Purdys, came together to visit 32 residents who had reported issues. All of them either had their issue fixed that day or were given an appointment for someone to come and sort the problem.

Thanks to the positive feedback from residents, we’re now holding other similar days across South London.

Elsewhere, our regional repairs teams are holding drop-in surgeries, where residents can turn up and report a problem in-person. Both programmes are part of our plans to become more visible in local communities and to help reassure residents that if they report a problem, it will be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

E-bike improves service as well as reducing emissions

Caretakers working in the Earl’s Court area of West London are reducing emissions, saving time, and improving the service they provide for residents thanks to a new electric micromobility scooter.

The bike, which was added to our West London fleet in March, has halved the time it takes caretakers to travel between estates, giving them more time to keep residents’ communal areas clean and tidy.

Switching our fleet to electric vehicles is one of the pledges of our Sustainability Strategy, and while vehicle emissions account for only a small part of the Group’s overall carbon footprint, every small change helps. A small diesel van, which would have been used by the caretakers to travel between estates emits on average nearly two tonnes of carbon a year.

Being local benefits everyone

We’ve introduced a new local repairs service to improve the experience for residents, deliver better value for money and increase accountability.  

After working with Peabody since 2018, KBH Haus has recently taken on one of our local repairs contracts in Essex, part of Peabody’s North Counties region. Their customer satisfaction rating is 88 percent. 

The firm, which is based in Essex, is now responsible for just under 2,000 Peabody homes and believes being local makes a big difference when it comes to managing residents’ repairs.

“We’re able to offer a far superior service with a bit of TLC,” says Sam Whitmore, Director or Operations at KBH Haus.

And that’s not just him talking, we have the data to back up his claim. KBH are well within target when it comes to the quality of repairs, appointment attendance, and the way they communicate with residents.

The KBH contractors have direct contact with local Neighbourhood Managers. And because it’s the same repairs people on the ground in the community, they’re able to build relationships with residents, who are then more comfortable letting workers into their homes.

This means that fewer problems go unreported, and contractors can look ahead and consider preventative measures to solve issues before they become a bigger problem. “Ultimately everyone wins,” says Sam.

Parkside Youth Pop-ups

We’re listening to residents to make sure we offer the support and services that each neighbourhood needs.

Young residents at the Parkside Estate in Lewisham told us they felt overlooked. They wanted safe spaces, more activities, and a bigger say in what happens in their community. In response, we partnered with a local youth organisation to launch a series of pop-up events designed with, and for, young people.

The success was immediate. Young residents planned and delivered their own end-of-year celebration, building confidence and pride. Off the back of this success, we’re now helping set up a new Youth Panel to give them a stronger voice in shaping local services.

We’re also continuing to support holiday clubs and regular youth activities, creating safer, more engaging spaces all year round. The young people told us they feel more connected, more listened to, and more hopeful about what’s next.

Kruise overcome anxieties

Our apprenticeships offer alternative ways for colleagues to improve their career prospects.

For Kruise Clarke, her learning journey at Peabody has not only brought a promotion but also helped her overcome past anxieties and fully embrace her personal and professional development.

After two years working at Peabody, first in the Contact Centre and then as a Personal Assistant, Kruise was keen to gain a formal qualification and further her career. Unfortunately, she was put off by her negative experience at school, where ADHD meant she struggled in traditional learning environments and left with no qualifications.

During her time at Peabody, Kruise has demonstrated a natural aptitude for problem-solving and independent work. With the right support, she’s making great progress with the GCSEs she missed out on at school and has almost completed her Level 3 Business Administration apprenticeship.

Kruise now works as a Disrepair Lead, managing cases where the repair has not been dealt with appropriately. She won the Rising Star of the Year at our Apprenticeship Excellence Awards for her exceptional growth and commitment.

No job is too much for Peabody colleague

We take learning and development seriously and offer colleagues the opportunity to enhance their prospects at every stage of their career.

Tony Ayling has had a lot of roles since he started out as a Peabody Maintenance Caretaker on the Rosendale Road Estate in Lambeth in 1983. In that role, he did everything from the electrics to the decorating for 22 years. At that point, he took his future into his own hands in a move that he himself describes as ‘perhaps a little over-confident’.

During a routine home visit, Tony found a leak that had been there for years. Instead of just repairing it, he told his bosses that he could add more value by finding the cause of the leak… and the rest is history.

Now, 42 years into his Peabody career, Tony’s working as a surveyor for the Repairs team having gained qualifications in carpentry and residential surveying. “What I like about Peabody is that they’ve invested in me.”

Surplus food saves locals more than £200,000

As the high cost-of-living continues to affect many residents, the London Food Insecurity Network (LFIN), our partnership with The Felix Project, HACT and other G15 members, is going from strength to strength.

During the year, the LFIN supported 48 surplus food winter markets, distributing the equivalent of 62,000 meals that would otherwise have gone to waste.

It also provided 63 extra deliveries to our regular community partners, who were able to pass on 85,000 meals to local households. In total, this food saved people living in local communities £208,200.

Innovative alternative to replacing windows

Every little bit counts when it comes to sustainability. 

We’re trialling a simple but innovative way of preparing residents’ homes for climate change.

By painting a clear coating on drafty single-glazed windows, we’ve successfully reduced the inside temperature by five degrees. The coating reflects the heat, preventing the room from overheating, and in the winter, we’ll be testing how it can keep warmth in. 

We’re working with Window Insulation, specialists in energy-saving building products, who we met at the Mayor’s Sustainable Ventures event earlier in the year. It is an affordable, non-intrusive alternative to replacing windows.

£5,000 to help local groups 

We work closely with partners to support people living in local communities.

Five community groups in Luton, including domestic abuse support groups Ebonista and Stepping Stones, have each been awarded grants of £5,000 as part of the town’s Healthier, Wealthier, Happier Communities Fund.

Developed in partnership with the Bedfordshire and Luton Community Foundation (BLCF), the fund supports local groups to address specific challenges, such as youth development and health inequalities, employment and economic inclusion, anti-social behaviour linked to gang and knife crime, and domestic abuse. The idea is to empower local organisations that often struggle to access traditional funding and help create lasting, positive change.

The other groups are Diverse FM, Dallow Amateur Boxing and the Mary Seacole Housing Association. Looking ahead, we hope to give an additional £10,000 in match-funded contributions to two of the groups next year.

Saving money with the right help

Demand for our financial support remains high.

James, a Peabody resident, saved a total of £950 thanks to help from Pocket Power, one of our financial support partners.

After contacting our Financial Inclusion team, James was referred to Pocket Power and successfully enrolled in the Affinity Water LIFT discount scheme.

On a follow up call, Pocket Power helped him get a new gas cooker through the Thames Water White Goods Fund and cut his monthly phone bill by more than half to £16.

Listening to residents

Residents at Mural House in Southwark were concerned about the lack of communication and response to complaints.

So we worked with them to address their concerns and make a plan to deal with them. 

Residents now have direct access to key staff and can arrange meetings themselves. We also gave them money to set up an independent residents group and supported them to start community initiatives such as an allotment.

“Forming a Resident’s Association has brought everyone in our block together in a really positive way. We’ve been able to get to know one another better through the RA meetings and socials, and it’s enabled us to work collaboratively to tackle problems.

“We’ve used the start-up grant to begin work on a communal vegetable patch, and we have a louder and stronger voice to address concerns and issues we have with Peabody.”

Apprenticeships benefit more than just the apprentice

For Dave Prouten, head of Connect Property Services, part of Peabody’s property maintenance division, apprenticeships are important for more than one reason.

The first is because he probably wouldn’t be where he is today without his own apprenticeship. And the second, is because they’re positive not only for the individual apprentices themselves, but also the organisations that take them on, and the wider economy.

For apprentices, it’s the chance to study for a career without going to university and getting deep into debt. And for those who are more practical and prefer to work with their hands, it’s a great route to gain on-the-job experience.

For social housing providers like Peabody and others in the wider construction sector, apprenticeships can help fill the gaps in the dire skills shortage that we’re currently facing. As Dave says, by teaching people how to do the job, we avoid losing essential trades skills and help advance our workforce.  

“Apprentices get real life experience while being paid,” he says. “They provide an opportunity for people of all ages and abilities to learn new skills or improve their skills. It could be younger people trying to get into an industry, or someone returning to work after a long period off. Apprenticeships give people a good grounding in whatever industry they work in.”

He also believes apprentices bring enthusiasm and fresh perspectives. And in most cases, they are a great asset to the organisation they’re working with. There are also financial benefits for the organisation as they get to train people to do the jobs they need and create clear pathways for progression.

Connect Property Services currently has six apprentices based at Houghton Hall in Bedfordshire, in Peabody’s North Counties region. They’re learning skills in plumbing, electrical work and carpentry either at the training centre or by shadowing a colleague visiting residents’ homes to make repairs.

Peabody has a total of 40 apprentices enrolled in a variety of different roles across the organisation. 

Find out more about our apprenticeship schemes

Valuable support

A resident in Wandsworth was struggling to pay her gas bill.

Our Financial Inclusion team helped her apply for a grant, only to find that she’d been missing out on £66 a week in pension credit since her partner died of Covid. 

When she received the £10,296 owed to her, she was very happy and said: “I could probably have the heating on every year for life now!”

Darwin Court food bank provides much needed support

The Darwin Court food bank in Southwark provides an essential service for about 90 residents each week, with the ages ranging from 16 to 94.

Thanks to partnerships with Purdy, one of our maintenance contractors who’s helping fund the project, and charities, The Felix Project and City Harvest who provide food donations, residents are able to pick up cupboard staples such as eggs, milk and bread.

For many (160 families are registered) it’s also a chance to get out of their homes, meet their neighbours and have a chat. With living costs continuing to rise and a reported 385,000 people using food banks last year, services like this are an important part of our commitment to providing help and support so residents can flourish.

Hospital Discharge Service

NHS Trusts can refer any resident to our Hospital Discharge Service if they need help preparing their home for their return following a hospital stay. Our support can be minor or more involved.

While in this case, the initial referral was for a deep clean, it soon became clear that more support was needed. The resident’s home had no heating and a family of 15 cats had caused extensive damage throughout. Once our team had built up trust with the resident, we were able to work with partner agencies to secure funding and make the home safe for her return.

Everyone’s involved in improving blue spaces in Thamesmead

In February, local residents and school children helped plant more than 400 plants in and around Gallions Lake in West Thamesmead to help increase the biodiversity of the local landscape. They helped choose the plants – all of which are native to Thamesmead – and used them to create a new wetland system. 

Together the chosen species, which include Forget-Me-Not and Yellow Iris, will provide food, cover and habitat for a range of wildlife, as well as help attract pollinators like bees, birds, and moths. Thamesmead is home to 7km of canals and five lakes.

The recent £170,000 improvements at Gallions Lake add to the 1,100sqm of floating reedbeds that Peabody has created in many of these areas.

“This type of co-creation and collaboration with the community is an extension of the wider work we’ve been doing in Thamesmead over the past few years,” said Jack Gower, Peabody’s Landscape Activation Manager for Thamesmead. “Residents have been involved in a range of exciting activities like tree planting, landscape design and stewardship of community gardens.”

Gateway Garden

This Dover-based initiative is billed as ‘a place where people and plants can grow’. It aims to support wellbeing and learning in a calm environment and is a joint project between Dover Counselling Centre, Town & Country Housing (TCH), Dover District Council and Future Skills.

TCH has helped to fund and support the initiative in various ways, including colleagues using Peabody Promise Days to volunteer at the site.

 The project has also been supported by TCH Repairs who donated scaffold boards that have been turned into planters, a skip, gardening tools and other useful equipment. Swale provided plumbing expertise and George Jones provided £15,000 of electrical works as part of their social value contribution.

New home feels like happiness, domestic abuse survivors says

Happy, more confident, and free of stress is how Susie* describes herself after moving into her new home with her three children in Waltham Forest. Her son loves being able to play football in the garden, her daughters are happy to have a nice room where they can chat and do their homework together, and Susie is particularly enjoying being able to cook and bake in the new kitchen.

This is all possible thanks to our partnership with charity Furnishing Futures and the London Borough of Waltham Forest. Together, we’re running a pilot scheme to provide fully furnished, affordable homes to three households who have fled domestic abuse and applied for social housing after living in refuge accommodation. Susie and her children are the first family to get a new home as part of the project and she’s in no doubt that it’s improved things for her and her children.

“When I wake up, I know it’s my house,” says Susie. “I feel happy. I am looking forward to every day.” She’s even stopped her anxiety medication.

Before they moved, Susie’s three children were sharing one room, which caused lots of arguments. Now, she says, they don’t argue at all. “My son has his room, he’s happy. My two daughters, their mental behaviour and attitude has really changed. They’re now more calm and balanced, and more friendly with each other. It has impacted their relationship with each other.”

Often when families need to escape abusive situations, they’re forced to move into temporary accommodation or refuges a long way from the areas they know and their friends. While refuges are furnished and have communal kitchens and living spaces, temporary accommodation is often unfurnished and in need of repair. 

By contrast, Susie’s new home is just a five-minute walk from the children’s school, meaning they’re still close to their friends and other members of their family. And, thanks to the funding from Peabody and Furnishing Futures’ expertise and donations, their home has been kitted out to a standard that would have taken Susie years to achieve on her own.

“I’m only the one person and I have to save the money. It’s hard,” she says, adding that she may even had to take out a loan. It’s been so nicely done. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it.”

ESG report case studies