Celebrating 10 Years of Freebridge Community Housing
Freebridge Community Housing celebrate their 10th birthday on 4 April.
It’s now ten years since 6,700 homes transferred to Freebridge from the Borough Council after 77 per cent of voting tenants elected for the move, and a great deal has happened since.
Tony Hall, Chief Executive of Freebridge said: “The transfer of homes to Freebridge in April 2006 was a enormously significant event for tenants. At that time fewer than 30% of tenants’ homes met the Government’s Decent Homes standard. Now almost 100% have been improved above this level, with just a few remaining to be completed within our bigger regeneration projects.
“Through working with our tenants, our employees and our partners, we have improved the quality of homes that our tenants live in and supported the communities where our tenants live.
“Reaching this 10 year point gives us the chance to look back at what we have achieve, whilst continuing to plan for the future. The world we find ourselves in is very different to the world that existed when Freebridge first started out, which means that we will need to be increasingly prudent with any plans we have to make sure that we continue to be a responsible landlord that develops homes and creates opportunities for people in the area.
“I would like to thank our tenants for their involvement and interest over the last ten years, our employees for all of their hard work, and our partners who have worked closely with us in supporting a better West Norfolk.”
In Freebridge’s first ten years we’ve:
- been open for business for over 2500 days.
- started over 7000 new tenancies.
- spent over £45 million in the local area up to 5 miles from
- our Juniper House office in King’s Lynn.
- employed over 400 members of staff.
- given community groups over £46,000 in grants from our Community Fund.
- visited over 4000 homes whilst out and about in west Norfolk.
- presented over 50 awards at our Community Awards nights.
- installed 5324 kitchens, 4436 bathrooms, put new windows in 5418 homes, new doors in 6161 homes, new heating systems in 5273 homes and had re-wired homes 4354.
- developed or acquired over 150 new homes.
- completed over 200,000 repairs.