Aster Group Q&A: Delivering High-Quality Homes Across the South of England Posted on: January 17th, 2021 Ahead of the South Coast Development Conference we’ve been speaking to one of our event speakers – Jane Gallifent, Development and Sales Director at Aster Group. With 30,000 homes under management and assets totalling more than £1bn they’re one of the key players in the regional housing sector and we discuss the regional housing outlook… Q. Delivering an average of 1,000 new homes over the South East and West of England per year Aster Group is playing a key role in bringing forward new homes – tell us a little about the business and the work you’re doing? At Aster, our vision that everyone has a home underpins everything that we do. The lack of affordable housing in the UK has been a critical issue for some time, exacerbated by the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the economy. To combat this, it’s important to cater for a wide variety of customer needs – which is why we offer a range of housing options and tenures, from land-led programmes, to social and affordable housing, including shared ownership homes and Community Land Trusts (CLTs). Q. Everyone has a home – that’s the vision your company and colleagues are all behind. How does this shape your strategic approach? Our purpose is very clear. We improve people’s lives. We provide safety and security through our reliable landlord services and we supply a wide range of housing options in response to the housing crisis. Our strengths are our people and ethical approach. It’s these principles that have shaped our latest transformation project – Programme Experience – which is helping us to improve and modernise our customer and colleague experience which we believe go hand in hand. As a housing association, any profit we make is reinvested into the construction of more houses, into the services we provide and into resources we know our customers will benefit from. For example, through the Aster Foundation we help our customers with their financial wellbeing, digital inclusion, employability and mental health, all of which form part of our wider efforts to positively impact and improve our customers’ lives. Q. You are primarily based across the South of England – do you have ambitions to expand to new towns, cities and regions? We’ve expanded over the past few years into new territories in the South of England and we continuously look for new opportunities for growth. A priority for us, aside from protecting our people and our customers during the current pandemic, is to return our development programme back to full capacity. We’ll also build new partnerships with other providers, while further developing existing partnerships such as the joint ventures we have undertaken with Vistry. Our view is that the pandemic has highlighted that we cannot work alone if we are to meet the housing challenges ahead of us, and that greater collaboration in the housing sector is not only beneficial, but essential.” Q. One of your key focuses in your Corporate Strategy is enhancing your social impact – how do you measure this and what’s the key to success? We created the Aster Foundation to give something back. It’s the work we choose to do over and above our landlord and development activities. Through our Aster Foundation we invest in our communities and their future through a range of initiatives including our Into Work and Financial Wellbeing services, our Digital College, tackling fuel poverty, mental wellness and resilience and volunteering opportunities. The Aster Foundation also supports Housing First to tackle homelessness and our Independent Living Services to support and enable independence for our older customers by providing solutions to address a range of exclusion challenges. Social innovation, enterprise and collaboration also lie at the heart of the Aster Foundation. Our social incubator, inc. is integral in creating and supporting the next wave of social entrepreneurs who will make a difference and drive change across our communities. Q. You are also looking to ensure you’re ready for the future – welcoming new solutions and becoming more digital and connecting. What innovative solutions is Aster Group already adopting in this space? Aster operates across the South of England with colleagues working across a breadth of roles and working environments, such as construction, landlord services and community development. Even before the pandemic, we offered innovative working solutions such as maintaining a flexible working culture and rethinking traditional team structures to encourage movement and development within the business – not only because it means we can operate more efficiently, but also to provide employees with a more stable work-life balance and to empower them to shape their own careers. As the country fell under lockdown, and many colleagues were restricted to working from home for the first time, we were lucky to already have the infrastructure in place to ensure that our people could operate as efficiently as possible in a variety of working environments. It’s vital for businesses to recognise that their people face different challenges and that one person’s experience of working remotely is different to someone else’s. Organisations need to take each case individually, just as they would with their customers.” Q. You’re speaking at the South Coast Development Conference – what are some of the latest schemes which you are bringing forward across the region? We have a range of exciting schemes underway across the region, especially centred on our work with Community Land Trusts (CLTs). We are already the leading housing association provider of CLT partnerships, having delivered 13 CLT schemes to date. Just before Christmas, we delivered 23 new affordable homes in Eastington, Gloucestershire through a CLT partnership with local residents, and we are due to complete three more projects in Devon, Dorset and Gloucestershire that will provide almost 40 new homes for local residents. We are soon to complete the final handover of homes developed in partnership with Chagford CLT, which includes 22 affordable rent homes and six shared ownership properties. These schemes will accompany the successful projects we’ve already undertaken in the southern region, including our CLT site in Devon which was recognised in the 2017/18 Rural Housing Award for Outstanding Community Contribution. I’m also looking forward to discussing our plans for our site in Bargates, Christchurch, a scheme comprising 170 new homes and flats and that’s set to enhance the vibrancy of the town centre. Click here to register for the South Coast Development Conference.
