Strategy
Our strategy guides us in setting our priorities and measuring our performance.
Our updated strategy seeks to build on the many positive elements of our business. We want to maintain and enhance our good reputation for placemaking and quality and continue our strong heritage in sourcing and developing both short-term and strategic land. We have refocused on improving operational efficiencies in order to achieve our strategic priorities.
We assess our performance in achieving our strategic priorities and other key areas of focus through Key Performance Indicators.
Placemaking & Quality
Creating attractive and vibrant communities with a focus on sustainability is what we do well.
We create aspirational developments that we know our customers are proud to call home, maintaining our reputation for build quality.
We will continue to focus our investments on high quality locations and invest in placemaking and design that is valued by our customers and communities.
Land Portfolio
We have a well located, flexible land portfolio with a weighting in Southern England where demand is high and supply is more constrained. Our short-term land portfolio provides us with a good supply of land for our forecasted business needs.
We prioritise utilising our land portfolio first for our own operational needs with an aspiration to increase the number of sales outlets. We will then look to deliver combination schemes of private open market units and bulk deals with the Private Rented Sector (PRS) or Registered Providers (RPs), potentially delivered via a joint venture vehicle. Disposal to a third party is our final consideration.
Operational Efficiency
We are focused on working in a disciplined manner and increasing our focus on operational efficiency.
We have made good progress with our new house type range and we are targeting that 80% of our open market houses will be delivered using this range over time.
Our revised core specification and a review of suppliers has driven some major cost savings without reducing the standard of our specification. In many cases, we have been able to enhance our offer.
Focus also remains on delivering central efficiencies, aligned to operational need and reducing administrative expenditure.
Five-Star Customer Service
We have embedded a ‘right first-time’ culture and are focused on improving delivery of homes and after sales service with a stronger emphasis on site teams having direct responsibility for quality. This is complemented by divisional-based customer service teams which provide post-completion support.
During the year, we were delighted to have been awarded five-star housebuilder status by the Home Builders Federation (HBF).
Multi Channel Approach
We are building on our capabilities to deliver homes with partners such as the public sector, PRS providers and RPs. We have been doing this for some time and we aim to build on our reputation as a trusted partner. We have established an experienced team in our new Crest Nicholson Partnerships and Strategic Land division to lead this work, aiming to increase the sales contribution from our multi tenure business to 15% to 20% over the medium term.
