Page 78 - Pobl Annual Report FY25

76 Annual Report 2025
Notes to the Financial Statements
for the year ended 31 March 2025
68
1.3 Summary of significant accounting policies
The principal accounting policies applied in the
preparation of these consolidated and company
financial statements are set out below. These policies
have been consistently applied to all the years
presented, unless otherwise stated.
Basis of preparation
These consolidated and company financial statements
are prepared on a going concern basis, under the
historical cost convention, in accordance with FRS 102,
the Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK
and Ireland (‘FRS 102’) and comply with the Statement
of Recommended Practice for Registered Social
Housing Providers 2018 (the ‘SORP 2018’), the
Housing and Regeneration Act 2008 and the
Accounting Requirements for Registered Social
Landlords General Determination (Wales) 2015.
On 1st April 2024, Pobl Group Limited merged with Linc
Cymru Housing Association Limited, a registered social
landlord with similar activities. These financial
statements have been prepared on a consolidated
basis in line with the principles laid out in FRS102. The
comparative amounts have been restated by including
the results for the two combining companies for the
previous accounting period and their statement of
financial positions for the previous reporting date. The
comparative figures are marked as ‘restated’ figures.
Further details are given in note 33.
The preparation of financial statements requires the use
of certain critical accounting estimates. It also requires
management to exercise its judgement in the process of
applying the Group and Company accounting policies.
The areas involving a higher degree of judgement or
complexity, or areas where assumptions and estimates
are significant to the financial statements, are disclosed
in note 2.
Going concern
The financial statements have been prepared on a
going concern basis which the directors consider to be
appropriate for the following reasons.
The Group prepares a 30-year business plan which is
updated and approved on an annual basis. The most
recent business plan was approved in August 2025 by
the Board. As well as considering the impact of a
number of scenarios on the business plan the Board
also adopted a stress testing framework against the
base plan. The stress testing impacts were measured
against loan covenants and peak borrowing levels
In order to reach this conclusion, the Board has
considered the following factors:
 The property market – budget and business
plan scenarios have taken account of delays in
handovers, lower numbers of property sales,
reductions in sales values and potential
conversion of market sale to social homes;
 Maintenance costs – budget and business plan
scenarios have been modelled to take account
of cost increases, the impact of delays to major
works and sensitivities have been included to
understand potential future costs around
decarbonisation;
 Rent and service charge receivable – arrears
and bad debts have been increased to allow for
customer difficulties in making payments and
budget and business plan scenarios to take
account of rent freezes and timing of living rent
convergence;
 Liquidity – current available cash and unutilised
loan facilities of £350m which gives significant
headroom for committed expenditure and other
forecast cash flows over the going concern
assessment period;
 The group’s ability to withstand other adverse
scenarios such as higher interest rates and
increases in the number of void properties.
The Board believes the Group and association have
sufficient funding in place and expect the Group to be
in compliance with its debt covenants even in severe,
but plausible, downside scenarios.
Consequently, the Directors are confident that the
Group and Association will have sufficient funds to
continue to meet their liabilities as they fall due for at
least 12 months from the date of approval of the
financial statements and therefore have prepared the
financial statements on a going concern basis.
compared to agreed facilities, with potential mitigating
actions identified to reduce expenditure.
The Board, after reviewing the Group and Association
budgets for 2025 and the Group’s medium-term
financial position as detailed in the 30-year business
plan, is of the opinion that, taking account of severe
but plausible downsides, the Group and Association
have adequate resources to continue to meet their
liabilities over the period of 12 months from the date of
approval of the financial statements (the going concern
assessment period).