Introduction.
Taff was founded 45 years ago! Our founders were passionate about helping families in housing need – that commitment remains with us today. Our social purpose is stronger than ever.
We understand the importance of a safe, secure and affordable home. We develop places with people, not profit, in mind, building homes and communities where people can thrive. We own and manage over 1,500 homes across Cardiff, giving over 4,000 people somewhere to call home. We also provide support services to over 1,000 people across South Wales, and we’re growing, aiming to build as many new homes as possible by 2024 to help solve the housing crisis.
Without a doubt, the Coronavirus pandemic has posed an unprecedented challenge to the ways we work and how we deliver our services. Despite these challenges, we remain optimistic. We have a new Executive Leadership Team in place, and we are looking to the future. Our response to the Covid-19 pandemic has driven change at pace and proven that very little of how we do what we do is set in stone. We’ve risen to the challenge, and as we transition towards a new ‘business as usual’ we commit to focusing on what matters to our tenants, service users, colleagues and wider stakeholders.
We’re determined to deliver great quality homes and services by being an excellent social landlord and one of the best providers of high quality, affordable homes and support services. We want to do this in ways that are fair and ethical and reduce our impact on the planet. We know that capturing the power of technology will be central to delivering our plan.
We are committed to supporting communities to thrive by delivering our services with kindness and empathy and have adopted the principles of a Psychologically Informed Environment. This approach helps people better understand their behaviour, take responsibility for themselves and develop positive relationships. We won’t shy away from helping people tackle tough issues like unemployment, poverty, domestic violence, poor mental health and anti-social behaviour.
Looking to the future we are now in an excellent position to become the organisation we and our tenants want to us be.
Understanding the External Environment.
This strategy has been prepared at a time of change for Wales Here are the challenges we think will have most impact
Our Mission at Taff
To deliver great quality homes and services and support communities to thrive.
Our Values
Help guide us
Our Priorities.
To deliver our mission we will focus on:
Our Ambition
Our top priority is providing great homes and services to customers and driving customer satisfaction to the next level while continuing to grow.
Our tenants will be able to access the services they need from Taff at a time and place that suits them. By embracing technology we’ll transform our service offer, saving time and money and improving tenant satisfaction.
We’ll continue to explore ways that technology can support our tenants and service users directly and through the automation of routine transactions. This will ensure our colleagues remain available to provide one to one help with more complex or sensitive matters.
We will be consistently getting the basics right, ensuring our tenants and service users receive high-quality services from us. We want to provide homes that people feel safe and proud to live in.
By listening closely to and working with tenants we’ll design services to meet their expectations and provide targeted support where needed. We’ll complement this by using data and insight to help us to take a proactive approach to deliver services.
Our use of technology and data is transforming the way we invest in and look after homes, ensuring they’re maintained to high quality, are safe and environmentally sustainable.
For the homes that we already own, we’ll make sure repairs and maintenance are of a high standard. With our own repairs team, much of this is within our gift and we’ll work hard to increase satisfaction, ensuring compliance with health and safety legislation whilst reducing any unnecessary cost.
Our commitment to sustainability will see us change the way we manage and invest in our homes and estates for good.
Our Commitments
We can show how all our tenants’ homes meet the safety standards we’ve set in our Asset Management Strategy and comply with statutory health and safety requirements.
We will have a sector-leading approach to Tenant Engagement. When things go wrong, we put them right and learn from our mistakes.
We make it simple for everyone to do business with us. Our Digital Transformation Strategy – Drive to Digital will set out a clear path to deliver
Our tenants and service users trust us to provide advice and support when and where they need it. They know we’re on their side. People get the advice or practical support they need and we can clearly demonstrate the impact of our support.
Our Ambition
We’re a financially resilient business that proactively seeks out opportunities to work in partnership and collaborate when it makes sense to do so. Improvements in financial and performance reporting will help to achieve strong oversight and transparency.
We’ve made great progress on improving and strengthening our governance and improving support for Board members.
Our Commitments
Retention of our Standard Standard regulatory judgement. Our Board has the skills and support they need to set our strategic direction and manage strategic and operational risk. Our decision-making is transparent and supported by timely and accurate reporting and a clear and robust Board Assurance Framework.
We make sure that we remain a sustainable business by meeting the targets and golden rules we set in our Value for Money and Treasury Strategies.
Strategic and operational risks are bring effectively identified, assessed and mitigated. We have a clear risk apatite across the business use this to drive effective and efficient decision making.
Our Ambition
We aim to build as many new affordable homes as possible during the next three years. We’ll deliver new homes to a high environmental standard at genuinely affordable rents.
We know we can do more to both build and work sustainably. Homes are a major contributor to carbon emissions, so we’ll play our part in reducing energy consumption and work towards the eradication of fuel poverty.
We will create effective partnerships to deliver services that bring maximum benefit to individuals and their communities. We will monitor the work we do with our partners to ensure that it continues to be of real value.
We’ll support health and wellbeing initiatives and fight the corner of our local population using our influence for good.
We will continue to deliver high-quality support and build on our relationship with service commissioners. We will always put the needs of people before profit. Growth in our support work will be in areas where we believe our work can be delivered in accordance with our commitment to Psychologically Informed Environments.
Our Commitments
We will deliver as many new homes as possible over the course of this plan. Our Development Strategy sets out how we’ll deliver our ambitions.
Different organisations choose to work with us because they trust us to share our expertise. We’ll implement a new Corporate Communication Strategy, setting out how we’ll use our voice to support change for good. We ensure accessibility is at the heart of internal and external communications.
Our Environmental Sustainability Strategy will include targets for reducing our environmental footprint. We will be ready to commence a programme to decarbonise our stock following surveys.
Through our Support Strategy we will continue to strive to be a partner of choice and work closely with local authorities, public services, the third sector and charitable organisation to provide excellent support services across South Wales.
Our approach to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion goes beyond the legal requirements. We expect everyone to treat all our colleagues, tenants and service users with respect. We will be a good ally to all underrepresented groups and actively anti-racist.
We walk the TALK through our values.
We inspire Trust, we are Ambitious, we are always Learning and we are Kind.
It’s not only what we do that’s important, how we do it is just as important. Over the last year, we’ve been talking and listening to colleagues to help shape and guide our way of working. We accept there is still much to do to support everyone to engage and live out our values.
Our new People Strategy will be progressive and have a clear emphasis on making sure we enable high levels of colleague engagement; along with creating a working environment in which people feel comfortable to be themselves – an environment that is truly inclusive.
We’re proud of our colleagues’ skills, resilience and commitment. During a time of considerable change, our people have continued to focus on delivering the services our tenants and services users depend on. This has been achieved at the same time as embracing and getting involved with planning for more change and dealing with the impacts the pandemic has had on our personal lives.
We are starting to understand the long-lasting impact Covid-19 will have on where and how we work. Whilst many of us have enjoyed working remotely, we have missed sharing workspaces, the camaraderie and informal conversations that often help us achieve our goals. In light of the new post-pandemic working environment, our new People Strategy will play a fundamental role in delivering our new Corporate Plan aims. This includes the introduction of permanent agile and blended ways of home and office-based working.
It is now time to shape a Future Workplace Strategy that takes the learning from working remotely yet recognises the importance and need to have space to collaborate. The strategy will be co-produced to make sure we create space that will enable us to thrive at work. This will include thinking about the future world of work and considering the expectations of colleagues who will be entering the workforce in the next decade.
We aim to be sector leaders in our approach to diversity and wellbeing; we will be more reflective of the communities we serve. We have adopted an ambitious plan Deeds Not Words to address inequality. We have a zero-tolerance approach to discrimination of any kind and will be actively anti-racist in everything we do.
Our leaders are visible and approachable. To support this ambition, we are implementing Lead@Taff. This is an ambitious leadership development programme and will encourage an entrepreneurial approach right across the business. We will support our leaders to develop the skills they need to lead agile teams effectively in accordance with our values. We will enable all colleagues to continue learning.
We will embrace change. We challenge the ‘norm’ and work together to push boundaries and innovate. We will focus on outcomes, not process. We recognise that at times what we do won’t be perfect, but we will always make sure we adapt and adjust as we learn. If what we do doesn’t work – we’ll change it!
As an employer, we’ll work tirelessly to create an empowering, supportive and rewarding working environment. We are modernising our approach to pay and reward to make sure that our ‘offer’ as an employer remains attractive.
We won’t shy away from having high expectations of all our colleagues. We take responsibility to achieve results and create an environment that enables everyone to perform at their best. Colleagues are trusted to work remotely and encouraged to consider an appropriate work/life balance that meets their needs, the needs of the business, our tenants and service users. We will be implementing a Wellbeing Strategy that will focus on enabling everyone at Taff to thrive, have a great sense of purpose and play their part in making sure we achieve our mission.
Measuring Success
We will measure our success against the commitments made in this plan and report progress to Board and feedback to tenants on how we are performing.
Delivering Great Homes and Services PDF Download