Peabody Trust has today announced the following changes to its executive team:

Elly Hoult’s title changes to Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Chief Executive Officer to reflect a broader remit across the organisation.

Bob Heapy will step down as CEO of Town & Country Housing on 6 April 2024. Elly Hoult will take over executive responsibility, working closely with Colin Lissenden who will take up the position of Town & Country Housing Managing Director.

John Lewis will take on a broader role as Executive Director - Sustainable Places. This will help us accelerate our plans to become local and resident focused, and ensure sustainable places are at the heart of our future strategy. John will continue to lead our placemaking team in Thamesmead.

Peabody today announces that Eamonn Hughes, Chief Financial Officer, will leave the organisation at the end of the current financial year. Eamonn has been Peabody CFO since February 2020 and the process to appoint his successor will begin in due course.

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Peabody Group Accounts published (including Peabody Trust, Peabody Capital PLC, Peabody Capital No.2 PLC)

Peabody has today published its Annual Report for the year ended 31 March 2023. The annual reports have also been published for Catalyst Housing Limited, Peabody Capital PLC and Peabody Capital No.2 PLC.

This is the first year of Catalyst Housing Limited and its subsidiaries joining the Peabody Group, with the focus on creating a new, locally focused Peabody – closer to our residents and better connected with communities.

Investment in existing homes

We now have 107,449 homes within the Peabody Group. In 2022/23 we invested £179m in improving our homes and spent a further £177m on routine and cyclical maintenance. Together this makes a substantial combined spend of £356m in existing homes during the year. Over the next five years we anticipate spending over £2bn on maintaining and improving our existing homes.

We completed over 256,000 repairs with a satisfaction rating of 83%. We tested boilers and gas appliances in more than 45,850 homes and completed 12,935 electrical safety tests. Our teams carried out safety checks in over 7,000 blocks, inspecting fire doors and emergency lighting and making sure that common areas were kept clear.

Almost 78% of our homes are rated EPC C or above which continues to improve year on year. We secured a further £27.3m in grant to invest in making our homes more energy efficient. We are matching this with £25m to upgrade thousands more homes in the next three years. Further details are set out in our recently published Sustainability Strategy.

Getting closer to residents, customers and communities

We are working hard to improve overall resident satisfaction across the Group. Our increased investment and renewed local focus are starting to make a positive difference and we’re committed to continuous improvement in our services.

Our rents remain substantially below market levels at an average of £127 per week and an annual subsidy of £621m. 17,438 people benefitted from our care and support services in London and the home counties. We supported 443 people into work, provided 546 people with energy advice and invested £10m in community activities across the Group. This included giving £1.1m directly to people in the community to start their own local initiatives.

We also helped 3,526 people with advice and support to improve their skills and 689 people to achieve qualifications. Our annual jobs fair connected more than 1,600 job seekers with 60 employers and a wide range of services and support.

New homes and sustainable places

We invested more than £550m in our new homes programme during the year, completing 2,399 new homes and starting 2,376 more. 78 percent were for social rent and other affordable tenures including shared ownership. We also provided 525 market sale homes to help subsidise the development of much-needed affordable homes and were able to support 469 households to own more of their shared ownership home, generating £81m to be reinvested. With a strong pipeline of top-quality new homes, we’ll continue to do what we can to help tackle the housing crisis through sustainable long-term placemaking.

Surplus for the year

Our operating surplus before changes in investment property valuations was £257m, compared to £213m in 2022. This shows Peabody’s financial resilience, which was further strengthened by the transfer of Catalyst’s £1.8bn net assets on 1 April 2022. This supported our extensive investments in our homes and places in 2022/23.

Our overall operating margin before investment property valuation was 23% compared to 32% in 2022. As we set out in July our operating margins were impacted during the year by challenging economic conditions including high inflation, rising interest rates and labour and material shortages. The reduced margin also reflects increased spending on repairs and maintenance as well as higher sales volumes.

In the autumn we reprofiled the delivery of new homes with partners to prevent exposure to an undue level of risk. We’re prioritising investment in our existing homes and locally focused services. However, we’re also well placed to continue delivering new affordable homes due to careful financial management. We also took decisive steps to hedge our exposure to interest rate rises in the year as an important response to the difficult economic backdrop.

Despite the economic challenges we’ve invested substantially in our existing homes to make them safer, more sustainable and energy efficient and to better meet the needs of our residents. Our operating surplus has been fully reinvested in our homes and our communities and in subsidising new social and affordable homes.

New Directors

On 1 September 2023 Eustace Xavier was appointed to the Peabody Trust Board and will sit on the Audit & Risk and Finance & Treasury Committees.

On 19 September 2023 Martyn Burke joined the Peabody Trust Board.

Contact: Anthony Marriott, Director of Treasury & Corporate Finance or Ben Blades, Assistant Director Corporate Affairs

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Peabody Trust has published a £1bn Note Programme dated 16 February 2024.

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Caroline Corby has been appointed as the new Chair of the Peabody Group following a competitive recruitment process. She will take up the role on 1 April 2024 with current interim Chair David Hardy becoming Vice-Chair of the Group.

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In line with our priorities of getting the basics right and getting closer to our residents, we spent £184m on our existing homes in the six months to the end of September. This is an increase 50 percent on the same period last year. Our Financial Inclusion team received over 1,100 referrals and helped residents to increase their household income by over £1m.

Despite the economic challenges, we continued to spend on building safety, improving insulation and proactively managing damp, mould and condensation, repairs and maintenance. We also surveyed 6,560 residents’ homes to assess their condition.

Commenting on the results, Peabody’s Chief Financial Officer, Eamonn Hughes said:

“We continue to invest in getting closer to residents through a renewed local focus, with more neighbourhood teams, proactive condition surveys and a plan for a more effective and efficient repairs service.

“We continue to make progress with our substantial change programme and this trading update demonstrates that we are prioritising investment.”

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Ravi Rajagopal has decided not to seek re-appointment to the boards of Peabody Trust, Peabody Capital PLC and Peabody Capital No 2 PLC when his three-year term comes to an end on 31 October 2023.

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The Peabody Group has published its Sustainability Strategy 2023-26. This sets out the organisation's action plan for the next three years as we work towards a carbon neutral future..

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