Bridge Housing Annual Report 2022 - Flipbook - Page 9
Rebecca Pinkstone
Chief Executive Officer
Bridge Housing
This is my first annual report as CEO of Bridge Housing
following the retirement of our long-serving CEO, John
Nicolades. I would like to personally thank John for his
service and commitment to Bridge Housing and for his
personal support throughout my time in the organisation
as Chief Operating Officer.
I have been fortunate to assume leadership of a robust
organisation that is characterised by a committed team
and underpinned by strong financial performance. I
have been heartened by the support I have received from
staff, colleagues in the community housing industry and
in partner agencies as I transitioned to the position. I
would like to acknowledge my Executive Team who have
supported me as I have navigated a new role and as our
relationships shifted as a result of reporting line changes.
This has been a year of two halves. COVID-19 lockdowns
and service delivery challenges faced our staff and
our customers prior to Christmas. With the beginning of
the new year, these restrictions have eased and a ‘new
normal’ now exists. The pandemic necessitated a change
to working with a blurring of the boundaries between
work and home. While we have always had flexible
arrangements, we have now introduced new hybrid working
arrangements with staff in recognition of this new working
environment.
I would like to acknowledge the resilience and strength
of our residents and staff as they have negotiated the
changes in restrictions, particularly those who were
living in the areas of concern and subject to hard lockdown.
I particularly applaud the role that our tenant representatives
played in working with us to support residents and identify
opportunities for engagement and connection.
This has been a year of significant change for the business.
A new CEO and changes in our leadership team at our
Executive level cannot be underestimated. Upon my
appointment we undertook a realignment of our services,
to embed our regional management approach and elevated
the people and culture function to report directly to the
CEO. I genuinely believe that local communities can drive
change with the right support. Reinforcing the regional
structures of our business enables us to foster our local
partnerships with service providers and reflect the
differing needs of our applicants and residents based on
where they live.
I also believe that culture must be lead from the top and
that leadership should be fostered irrespective of role or
title. To this end we are focusing on embedding a strengthsbased approach to leadership in the business, critically
reviewing the values and behaviours we expect of each
other. This will be the focus of our work in the coming year.
It was also the first year of our new Strategic Plan, which
has been developed with our Board, staff and customers.
We have pursued our new strategic directions including
the development of our Environmental, Social, Governance
(ESG) platform, a new digital strategy roadmap and an
advocacy platform. These pieces of work are under way
and will position our business to take advantage of new
emerging opportunities in response to changes in our
operating environment.
The team has been undertaking some transformational
work over the last year to support our Strategic Plan
objectives. One area I would like to highlight is the
development of our ESG Strategy. In the UK, where social
housing is approximately 20 per cent of the housing market,
there has been a significant focus on how social landlords
contribute to reducing emissions in the face of the climate
emergency and how reporting on ESG outcomes lays the
foundation for institutional and private sector investment
in affordable housing. We would like to build on the UK’s
expertise in this area.
At Bridge Housing we have had a strong focus on
measuring the social outcomes of our work and a robust
governance approach. Our next step is to understand
and address our environmental impact. This has involved
detailed work to understand the scope of our emissions
and how we can measure these to create an environmental
baseline. I have been particularly impressed by how this has
been embraced by staff across the business. It is complex
work, however, we are up for the challenge. We will use our
ESG Strategy and baseline data to build the evidence base
for sound investment into our environmental sustainability
as we grow and develop.
Improving lives, strengthening communities | 5