Page 27 - Pobl Annual Report FY25

Annual Report 2025 25
Pobl Trades completed 43,823 repairs during the year, of which 36,294 were delivered by our
in‐house Pobl Trades engineers, subcontracting the remaining 7,529 repairs to our contractor
partners. We also upgraded 911 kitchens and bathrooms as part of our planned upgrade
programme, and fully rewired 243 homes.
Demand was high for our responsive repairs service, but our team were still able to maintain high
levels of customer satisfaction throughout the year. Our customers rated the attitude of our
engineers at 9.5 / 10 and our overall customer satisfaction score increased from 8.7 last year to
8.8 this year, which includes questions on the quality of our repairs, our customers’ trust and the
process for booking repairs.
Supporting our customers
The cost‐of‐living crisis continues and is compounded by both managed migration to Universal
Credit for our most vulnerable cohort of customers and stubbornly high food and energy bills. We
have invested significantly in our hardship fund (the Sustainable Tenancies Grant), having allocated
£41,000 for the forthcoming financial year.
This year was another
record‐breaking year for our
Advice and Support team,
generating financial gains for our
customers totaling £1.8 million
(2024: £1.4 million). Our
Customer Resilience and
Wellbeing team opened 372
cases with financial savings for
customers of £27,000.
We continue to fund access to expert third‐party debt advice and hoarding support to improve
tenancy sustainability. We referred 119 customers for complex debt intervention, resulting in over
£100,000 of debt being written off. We also worked successfully with 36 customers around
hoarding and its associated complexities.
Our Sustainable Tenancies Grant helped customers with issues ranging from fuel and food support
to replacing children’s beds and white goods. Partnership working with agencies such as Save the
Children and the Trussell Trust enabled our customers to benefit from a range of initiatives
including the issuing of over 200 food bank parcels and payments to struggling families for
essential items.