Notting Hill Genesis unaudited trading update for financial year ending 31 March 2025

16 June 2025, London - Notting Hill Genesis, one of London's largest not-for-profit housing associations, is today providing a trading update for the year ending 31 March 2025 (FY 2024/25 of the "Period") ahead of the publication of its audited 2024/25 annual report and financial statements in September.

Financial overview

Despite the challenging economic environment throughout 2024/25, the underlying performance of the group was robust, with significant operational and strategic progress made.

Turnover increased by 1% to £717m (FY 2023/24: £711.8m), with growth driven by inflationary rent increases. This was partially offset by a year-on-year reduction in new home sale revenues, down 25% compared to FY 2023/24, due to the phasing of the development programme. We maintained disciplined cost control, with operating costs decreasing year-on-year, resulting in a 14% increase in operating surplus before movement in fair value and exceptional items to £115m (FY 2023/24: £101m).

Overall reported operating surplus has been impacted by revaluation and impairment items. This includes:

·      £(119)m due to the revaluation of our private rental portfolio, Folio, which has been impacted by macro-economic uncertainty, gilt price movements upon which the value of these assets is derived, private rental growth rates and the unknown impact of future legislation including the Renters Rights Bill.

·      £(45)m of exceptionals that are mainly from impairments due to the requirement for additional building safety work at Oak Square and land bank sites including our Spray Street development, cost overruns at Cambridge House stemming from the contractor entering administration and impairment of our out of London homes, including schemes in Hertfordshire and Essex.

Combined together, these items amount to £164m in exceptional charges, resulting in a deficit after taxation of £129.4m for the year (FY 2023/24: £90.2m).

Resilient financial position

We continue to maintain a robust balance sheet with strong liquidity and headroom in excess of £588m across our cash and undrawn facilities. Following the Period-end we successfully raised £250m at a competitive 6%. We have also worked well with our lenders to improve our covenant position.

We continue to target measures to reduce debt in order to underpin the organisation's financial resilience. The strategic review of our private rental business, Folio, is progressing with our appointed partners.

Good strategic progress

We continue to make good progress against our Better Together strategy:

Better connections

·      Our annual home visit programme reached its highest level yet, with the percentage of homes visited within the last 12 months increasing to 85.7% (2024: 77.9%).

·      Our dedicated repairs hub team is starting to deliver positive results - in April 2024, the month before the new team started work, customer satisfaction with their most recent repair was at 77.8%. By the end of the financial year, it had reached 81.7%

 Better homes

·      Significant progress has been made on overdue fire risk hazards. The percentage of blocks with an in-date fire risk assessment and no overdue actions increased to 86.2% (2024: 72.56%).

·      We have made significant headway on damp and mould, with the number of damp and mould visits completed within 10 working days increasing to 79.9% in March 2025 (2024: 71.5%).

·      We set ourselves a stock condition survey target of 8,500 for the year and exceeded this, completing 8,817 stock condition surveys in the year to March 2025. Additionally, 70.3% of homes have been surveyed within the last five years.

·      £116m was spent on day-to-day repairs in FY 2024/25 and 147,000 repairs were completed.

·      £110m was spent on our improvement and refurbishment programme to deliver better homes for residents, including 503 upgraded kitchens and bathrooms. 2,245 homes have had planned investment works in the year, with a further 966 homes currently underway.

Better places

·      We invested more than £118m across our regeneration schemes, supporting our drive to deliver greater social value to local communities.

·      The group sold 191 homes (FY 2023/24: 211 homes), which was in line with our new build sales programme. We remain on track to deliver a further 986 completions in the year ahead.

Our building safety programme remains on track and within budget, with a focus on the highest risk buildings and 36.6% of buildings are now complete or with works underway. 22 were buildings completed during the period and work has started on a further 16.

Management changes

In the last 12 months we have made a number of important management changes and appointments to the Executive Board in order to better align the organisation around the delivery of the Better Together strategy and Regulatory Compliance Plan.

This includes the following new roles: Chief Customer Officer, Chief Homes Officer, Chief People Officer, Chief Governance & Risk Officer and Chief Organisational Effectiveness Officer.

Regulatory compliance

In November 2024, the Regulator of Social Housing published the outcome of its routine regulatory inspection of Notting Hill Genesis.

Since then, we have been working constructively with the regulator to agree a comprehensive and realistic action plan, as announced in April 2025, which will enable us to regain compliance with the regulator's governance and consumer standards.

This plan, underpinned by 11 workstreams, builds on the action we have taken over the last year to deliver our Better Together strategy and good progress is being made. Delivery of these plans is being monitored by our newly appointed non-executive director, Léann Hearne, who chairs of our new regulatory compliance sub-committee.

Patrick Franco, chief executive officer of Notting Hill Genesis, said: "We have made good operational and strategic progress in the year, despite the challenging economic and market conditions. The regulatory review outcome was disappointing, but we have responded positively and accelerated the transformation which was already underway.

"Notting Hill Genesis is an organisation undergoing significant change and investment. It will take time to deliver the results our residents expect but I am confident in our plan and our progress. None of this would be possible without the effort and dedication of our team and I pay tribute to their commitment."