Accessible Annual Report 2025/26

Welcome

First and foremost, I want to thank our Thrive Customer Voice (TCV) members. Your feedback, ideas and lived experiences have continued to guide our services over this reporting period and helped shape this Annual Report for Tenants.

Over the last three years, you have told us that repairs, property improvements, building safety and having a stronger voice are your top priorities. In response, we have focused this Annual Report on these areas, giving you a clear picture of the progress we have made and the work still ahead.

As you know, 2025/26 has been a year of significant change. It was my first full year as Chief Executive and, alongside delivering day-to-day services, we carried out a formal consultation on a proposed merger between Thrive Homes and Watford Community Housing. Hundreds of you took part, sharing your views on what a combined organisation should stand for and how it should continue to serve local communities. Your feedback played a vital role in influencing the final decision, which was confirmed at the end of March 2026. You can read more about the consultation and how we are acting on your feedback here.

As we look to the future, we do so as Chime Housing – a new organisation built on the strengths of both Thrive Homes and Watford Community Housing and guided by the voices of our residents. Our commitment remains the same: to provide safe, well-maintained homes, deliver reliable services, and ensure you have meaningful opportunities to influence what we do. Thank you for your continued trust and involvement as we begin this next chapter together.

If you have any questions about the content of this report, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to get in touch in the way that works best for you.

Paul Richmond
Chief Executive

Improving our repairs service

Repairs are the service you use most, so getting them right is a top priority for us. This year we continued with our Repairs Recovery Plan, which started in January 2025. We invested in extra internal resources and appointed new external contractors – supported by Thrive Customer Voice – to support when needed. This has helped steady the service and keep customer satisfaction high – ending the year at 93.2%.

In 2025/26, we completed 21,869 repairs – an increase of 5.8% from last year.

How we compare to other landlords

Responding within timescales

Type of repair	Our score %	Average score[1]
Emergency repairs	99.3%	91%
Non-emergency repairs	79.1%	79%

We continue to perform strongly on emergency repairs, well above the sector average. Non‑emergency repairs have also improved and are now in line with the national average, rising by 6% since last year. This shows the recovery work is making a difference.

We also kept the number of outstanding repairs below our target for eight months of the year, which helped improve the overall experience for customers.

However, we still face some challenges. These include contractor availability, scheduling repairs at times that work for customers, and gaining access to homes. These issues can slow things down, and tackling them will be a key focus for us over the next year as we continue working to make repairs more reliable and responsive.

Case study: How Thrive Customer Voice helped choose our new repairs contractor

When selecting a new contractor to strengthen our repairs and maintenance service, we made sure customers had a meaningful role in the process. Members of Thrive Customer Voice (TCV) were involved throughout the competitive selection process, helping us assess what good looks like from a resident’s perspective.

Customer Voice members reviewed the things that matter most to customers – such as keeping appointments, communicating clearly, completing work to a high standard, and providing value for money. Their insight shaped the evaluation criteria and the questions we asked bidders, ensuring customer priorities were at the heart of the decision.

Following this process, PiLON was appointed to support Thrive Homes with repairs and maintenance services. PiLON has a long-standing relationship with Thrive and demonstrated strong performance, a commitment to customer service, and a clear focus on improving the experience for residents. Customer Voice feedback played a key role in confirming that PiLON’s approach aligned with what customers told us they expect.

As the new contract beds in, customers will continue to have opportunities to influence how the service develops and to hold us and our contractors to account.

Acting on what customers told us

Alongside shaping the contractor appointment, customer feedback has also driven several improvements to how we communicate and monitor repairs, including:

• improving our online repairs status updates to give clearer, more transparent performance information.
• introducing a feedback box on the repairs status page so customers can quickly tell us what’s working and what isn’t
• continuing to use short surveys and polls to track customer views in real time, helping us respond more quickly and make ongoing improvements.

Maintaining our homes

We continue to invest in our homes to ensure they are decent, safe and warm. Our replacement programme is informed by the condition of key components, repair history and customer need, rather than age alone. From boilers to bathrooms, we focus investment where it’s most needed, making the best use of resources while maintaining quality homes.

Investment in existing homes has increased from £5.1 million in 2022/23 to £7.3 million in 2025/26, reflecting our commitment to maintaining safe, warm and comfortable homes.

In 2025/26, we delivered more replacement and improvement works across many key areas of our homes, including bathrooms, kitchens, heating systems, windows and doors.

	2024/25	2025/26
Bathrooms	62	100
Boilers & heating systems	163	270
Kitchens	97	125
Roofs	97	60
Windows	100	228
Doors	137	146
Fire doors	11	33
Electrical works	317	345
Fire safety works	14	0
Door entry and lift works	81	118
Flooring	2	1
Environmental works	0	1
Major aids & adaptations	24	34
Works to building walls	0	0
Structural works	0	9
External wall insulation	115	0

Year on year we are making homes more energy efficient. By the end of March 2026, 90% of our homes were EPC-C or above - up from 86% in the previous year and 56% in March 2022. 

Investment has been secured to ensure that a further 479 homes will be brought up to standard by 2029/30.

Providing Decent Homes

To keep your home safe, comfortable and in good condition, we carry out Stock Condition Surveys. These surveys help us understand what upgrades your home may need in the coming years – things like new kitchens, bathrooms, windows or roofs. They also make sure we invest in the right places at the right time.

Why we do these surveys

• They give us a clear picture of the condition of every home.
• They help us plan future improvements and budget for them properly.
• They make sure we meet the Decent Homes Standard and keep your home safe and well maintained.

Our progress this year

This year we carried out a major programme of surveys to make sure our records are fully up to date. As a result, we increased the number of homes with up-to-date information from 2,981 to 4,192 by the end of the year.

This means we have reliable, up-to-date information for almost all our homes, helping us plan improvements more accurately. We want to ensure every home benefits from these surveys so please do work with us if we contact you to make an appointment.

We expect the following to last at least…

• Bathrooms - 30 years
• Kitchens - 20 years
• Windows & Doors - 30 years
• Roofs - 60 years

These lifetimes are a guide, and we may choose to carry out an improvement earlier or later depending on its condition.

Meeting the Decent Homes Standard

The Decent Homes Standard sets out the minimum quality all social housing must meet. We report against this every year.

As of March 2026, we are proud to say that only one home does not meet the standard – just 0.02% of all our homes. This is due to subsidence (when the ground beneath a property sinks), and the resident has already been permanently moved to a new home.

Keeping you safe in your home

Making every visit count

During routine appointments like safety checks, repair visits, home visits and phone calls, we’ll check in with you to see how things are going, talk about any concerns you may have and check your property for damp and mould or health and safety issues.

In 2025/26, we identified the following through our visits:

• 1,354 damp and mould cases
• 87 other housing health and safety cases (HHSRS)
• 21 Safeguarding cases

If we spot damp and mould in your home, we will:

1. Carry out a full investigation and record what we find. This might be done in person or over a video call.
2. Explain what we found and what happens next – either in writing or over the phone.
3. Arrange any repairs needed and tell you how long they may take. Repairs could include installing extractor fans, fixing a leak or clearing the guttering.
4. Give you advice about how to prevent damp and mould in the future.
5. Carry out follow up visits to check on the issue.

Once we are satisfied the issue has been fixed, we will monitor it for at least 12 months to make sure it does not become a problem again.

Building safety in numbers

• 99.9% of homes have in-date gas safety checks
• 99.9% of homes have a valid electrical safety certificate
• 100% of communal areas have had electrical safety tests
• 100% of blocks have an in-date fire safety check
• 100% of recommended fire safety actions and works were completed within target
• 100% of fire safety equipment was serviced and fixed within target
• 100% of blocks have an in-date lift safety check
• 100% of blocks have an in-date asbestos safety check
• 100% of blocks have an in-date water safety check
• 100% of heat, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms have been checked
• 100% of fire doors checked to meet legal oblitations
• 33 fire doors replaced
• £50,900 lost when customers were not at home for gas safety checks
• £237,118 spent on clearing bulk rubbish (fly-tipping)

Safety information at your fingertips

You can access a wealth of safety advice on our website or by following us on Facebook. Find out more at

• thrivehomes.org.uk/home-safety
• facebook.com/ChimeHousing

How we performed

Whether it’s a passing comment, a complaint, compliment or a survey response – we use all your feedback to understand how we are performing and the areas where we can improve.

Thrive has reported against the draft Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) since January 2022 and are now benefitting from four years of comparable data. Over the past year, we have continued to see improvements in how satisfied customers are with our services.

Whilst overall satisfaction is comparable to last year we have seen improvements across all other measures as part of the perception surveys with notable improvements of over 4% in several key areas:

• Home is well maintained (up 4%)
• Landlord listens to views and acts upon them (up 5%)
• Clean and well-maintained communal areas (up 7%)
• Landlord makes a positive contribution to their neighbourhood (up 4.8%)

To view the full report shared with our regulator which has more details about how’re performing and making improvements, head to: thrivehomes.org.uk/tsm-2025-26

Our main areas of focus for 2026/27

Now that Thrive Homes and Watford Community Housing have come together as Chime Housing, we’re focusing on delivering the commitments set out in our Promise to Customers.

Over the next year, we’ll be working on the things you’ve told us matter most, and making sure our services reflect the improvements we’ve promised:

• Repairs: maintaining the good work achieved over the past 12 months and continuing to improve the time it takes to complete a repair including follow on work, and how we communicate about appointments. This supports our promise to deliver an improved repairs service.
• Cleaning & grounds maintenance services: continuing to monitor and assess the performance of our contracts, whilst promoting opportunities for customers to get involved as block representatives, linking to our promise to offer more ways for you to engage with us.
• Improving first contact resolution: increasing customer-facing teams to help customers get the right support first time by reducing wait times and improving access through the Customer Service Centre, including looking at options to make our services easier to access.
• Do what we say we will: by continuing to improve on how we report, complete and monitor actions for customers in a timely manner.

Customer Voice

We work closely with our customers to ensure their voices are heard across all levels of the organisation. Through Thrive Customer Voice (TCV), customers can choose how and when to participate – from quick polls and digital surveys to webinars, in-person events and focus groups. This flexible approach means people can get involved in ways that suit their time, interests and needs.

In 2025/26, customer input directly shaped several key areas of our work, including:

• the procurement of our repairs support contractor (read more here)
• a review of our cleaning and grounds maintenance contractor performance
• how we develop clear, accessible information on our aids and adaptations policy and processes

These insights help us improve services, strengthen accountability and ensure our decisions reflect what matters most to the people who live in our homes.

In 2025/26 we had 3,032 Thrive Customer Voice members

• 98.9% are online
• 63.5% of members are female
• 78% of members are tenants
• 7.7% of members are shared owners
• 9.6% of members are leaseholders
• 19.1% of members have recorded a disability

As we move forward as Chime Housing, we want every resident to have an even stronger voice in shaping our services and future direction. That’s why all customers will be invited to become Gateway Members – a new, simple way to stay informed, share your views and influence key decisions. Gateway Members can take part in consultations, vote on important matters and help hold the organisation to account. It’s an open, inclusive model designed to make sure your voice continues to guide how we work. Invitations and more information will be shared with all residents over the coming months.

Find out more at www.thrivehomes.org.uk/gateway-membership

Open Door Day

In September 2025, we held our first Open Door Day in High Wycombe – a new way for us to get out into the community, meet customers face-to-face and hear directly about your experiences. Teams from across Thrive, including repairs, neighbourhoods, customer service and building safety, spent the day knocking on doors and speaking to residents.

This wasn’t just a quick hello. The aim was to listen, learn and understand what matters most to you. It was great to meet so many of you who were home and happy to chat.

What we achieved on the day 

• 447 homes visited
• 136 customers spoken to
• 35 repairs reported – 34% fixed on the day
• 1.5 truckloads of rubbish removed by New Green
• 12 bags of rubbish removed by Groundscapes
• 2 complaints raised that have now been addressed.

What we heard

Across the conversations, three themes came up most often:

• Quality of cleaning and grounds maintenance (estate issues)
• Security and access issues
• Parking

What we’ve done since

We’ve already taken action on several issues raised, including:

• Reporting and removing abandoned cars
• Installing pigeon netting
• Working with Groundscapes and New Green on next steps to improve cleaning and grounds maintenance

What’s next

Open Door Day will return under Chime Housing – bigger, better and with a new name. Our ambition is to visit more homes, speak to more residents and build an even stronger understanding of what matters most to you. We’ll be in touch with further updates soon!!

Merger Consultation

Since December 2025, our main focus for customer engagement was the 10-week consultation on the proposed merger between Thrive Homes and Watford Community Housing. We wanted the process to be fair, transparent and inclusive, so we partnered with Tpas – an independent tenant engagement specialist – to support and validate the approach.

Over 750 households (5% of homes) took part through surveys, online sessions and face to face events. They shared views on what a combined organisation should stand for, what should be protected, and what improvements they wanted to see. The feedback shaped the merger proposal and informed the development of the new organisation’s brand and identity.

Key themes from the consultation included:

• 75% of residents said that the information we communicated about the merger was ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ clear, showing that people understood the proposal
• 58% of residents were either positive or neutral about the merger
• Repairs, service quality and trust were the biggest concerns
• For leaseholders, the cost of major works and long-term financial implications were the main concerns
• Better-informed residents tended to be more positive about the merger – people who were clear about the proposal were more confident and optimistic
• Overall, residents were cautiously optimistic, seeing the potential for increased resilience and investment
• Residents wanted reassurance that we wouldn’t lose touch with local communities, and a commitment to resident-led governance and good communication.

This feedback was presented to both Boards and played a significant role in shaping the final decision, confirmed at the end of March 2026.

Customer insight also helped set the early priorities for the new organisation, including service reliability, communication, and investment in homes. Our shared commitments are set out in Our Promise to Customers.

Compliments & Complaints

Thank you for your feedback.

We’re grateful for the positive feedback we receive. Many of your compliments highlight our team’s friendly attitude, their hard work, and politeness when carrying out works in your home. Customers also praised our colleagues for their customer service skills and professionalism on the phone.

• 68 compliments were received for colleagues
• 59 for the quality of repairs
• 8 relating to estate management
• 2 for the condition of their home
• 2 for the way your complaint was handled

“We felt heard and understood throughout. The team stayed calm, supportive and professional, and kept helping us through a very difficult time. Their patience and empathy made a real difference." – Thrive Tenant

Working with you to make things right

We believe every complaint is a chance to learn and improve. Over the past year, your feedback has helped us make some important changes, including:

• Strengthening our repairs service. Bringing in more engineers, improving how follow-on work is tracked and reviewing how we communicate with customers, including clearer call-backs and better appointment reminders.
• Better monitoring of our cleaning and grounds maintenance contractors. Now that new contracts are in place, we’ve implemented joint estate inspections to improve quality and consistency, resulting in a 6.2% increase in satisfaction.
• Improved damp & mould management, ensuring issues are identified early, resolved properly and less likely to return.

In 2025/26 we received a total of 972 total complaints compared to 991 in 2024/25

• 38 customers withdrew their complaint as we resolved the matter early on
• 62 complaints refused
• 94.1% of stage 1 complaints responded to within timescales
• 95.8% of stage 2 complaints responded to within timescales
• 36.2% satisfaction with complaint handling
• 29 cases were referred to the Housing Ombudsman

Looking forward: what happens next

As we become Chime Housing, we are using this opportunity to improve how our services work for customers by using information from complaints to tell us where things can be better.

We are focusing on the areas that matter most - communication, reliability and getting things right first time - so customers don’t need to chase or raise repeat issues.

Based on what you’ve told us, we’re focusing on:

• Improving communications across services – to reduce the need for you to chase
• Getting more repairs right first time – to avoid repeat visits
• Strengthening follow-through repairs – improving tracking and completion rates
• Improving first contact resolution – helping customers get the right support first time and reducing wait time by introducing new ways to contact us
• Improving data and tracking – strengthening systems and record keeping
• Better coordination across teams and contractors – strengthening how services work together with smoother handovers to avoid delays
• Working more closely with our customers – using new Gateway Membership to better understand how we can improve our services.

These changes are all about building trust and making sure you feel heard, respected, and that our service standards are met.

You can read more about these and other improvements in our Annual Complaints Performance Report 2025/26.

If you’re not happy with a service you’ve received, let us know as soon as possible. Our complaints process is regulated by the Housing Ombudsman, so you can trust us to make things right. Find out more here or contact us. 

We meet the Housing Ombudsman's Complaint Handling Code!

Learn more about our complaints handling performance, how we plan to improve, our Board’s response and our self-assessment against the Complaint Handling Code here

Improving Community Wellbeing

This year, our focus has been on strengthening the places our customers call home – supporting people to stay secure in their tenancies, keeping neighbourhoods safe, and investing in the shared spaces that help communities thrive. Across every part of our work, the aim has been the same: to make daily life feel a little easier, safer and more connected.

Supporting residents to stay secure

For many households, a small amount of timely support can make the difference between stability and struggle. In 2025/26, we worked with 91 households who needed extra help to sustain their tenancy. Much of this support involved guiding residents to the right specialist services, and as we move into Chime we’ll be reviewing how we can strengthen this offer further.

Our partnership with Herts Mind Community Support Service continued into its final year, funded through a £35,000 Thrive grant. Through this programme, residents could self refer or be referred by a Neighbourhood or ASB and Sustainment Officer for help with mental health or day to day wellbeing. Alongside this, our teams made 19 referrals to external agencies and 141 referrals to Citizens Advice, ensuring residents could access financial guidance, benefits advice and debt support when they needed it most.

Caring for neighbourhoods and shared spaces

A well-kept neighbourhood makes a real difference to how people feel about where they live. Throughout the year, we carried out quarterly block inspections to check safety standards and the quality of cleaning and grounds maintenance. Nine resident block representatives joined us, offering insight into what’s working well and what still needs attention.

A follow-up survey in February 2026 showed improvements in some detailed cleaning tasks since the introduction of new contracts, though key issues remain. Our Estates team continues to work closely with contractors, carrying out quality checks and sharing results to drive better performance.

We also invested in improving communal areas. At Offerton House, residents and contractors worked together on fencing, tree works and resurfacing, with paint donated by Travis Perkins. At Alexandra Road, bark chippings provided through social value contributions helped brighten shared flowerbeds.  

Keeping communities safe

Tackling anti social behaviour (ASB) remains a priority. We worked closely with the Three Rivers Community Safety Partnership, contributing to joint initiatives such as Safer Streets and attending ASB forums to coordinate support. This year, working closely with our partners, we secured five Closure Orders and issued seven Community Protection Warnings or Notices where ASB was affecting neighbours.

Our ASB & Neighbourhood team was recognised nationally, being shortlisted for Team of the Year at the Resolve awards – a testament to their commitment to protecting communities.

We also continued to tackle tenancy fraud, with seven open cases at year end and four homes recovered during the year. Taking part in the tri county key amnesty for the first time strengthened our partnership approach to preventing fraud.

Safeguarding underpins all of this work. Through our Make Every Visit Count approach, colleagues are encouraged to report concerns so that residents can receive support as early as possible.

Value for Money

Last year, the average rent for a Thrive property was £138.68 per week.

Despite rising costs, we’ve remained committed to delivering the level of service outlined in the Thrive Deal. Last year we spent:

• £8,656,000 (26% of total spend) on repairs
• £2,096,000 (6% of total spend) on making homes safe
• £3,889,000 (12% of total) on improving existing homes
• £10,770,000 (33% of total) building new homes
• £3,375,000 (10% of total) on energy efficiency upgrades
• £3,947,000 (12% of total) on other costs

Per year 2024/25Per year 2025/26

	Per year 2024/25	Per year 2025/26
Overall average cost per home	£5,665	£6,770
Our highest paid director’s salary, shown as an average cost per home	£29 per home (£172,000 total)	£33 per home (£194,000 total)
Our total directors’ salary costs, shown as an average cost per home	£166.92 (£990,000 total)	£157 per home (£939,000 total)

Any questions?

If you have any questions about this report or would like a printed copy please contact us in your usual way.