An extremely positive whirlwind of activity leaves us well positioned to deliver improvements for our customers

It’s been six months since Longhurst Group and Grand Union Housing Group merged to form Amplius. Here, Chief Executive Julie Doyle reflects on the progress made so far… 

Our first six months as Amplius have been busy and challenging, but extremely rewarding.  

We want to be a sector-leading housing provider that goes further and does more for our customers and I’m confident that we’re well on our way to achieving that. 

When the merger was first discussed, we knew how much work it would involve but we’ve absolutely embraced that challenge. I feel we’ve struck a good balance between taking the time to consider things with care and being agile and decisive, and as a result we’ve achieved a lot more than many people would’ve thought possible. 

As well as delivering the merger, we’ve also launched a whole new brand. This includes a new name and full visual identity, which we developed using feedback from hundreds of colleagues and customers. 

Having a strong new brand has been culturally significant and helped our colleagues feel like they’re working for a new organisation. It also perfectly aligns with our new vision, which we launched in March, to go further and do more for our customers and communities.  

In addition to our new brand and vision, we also announced our new values on day one as Amplius, which again were informed through colleague feedback across both legacy organisations. 

Everything we’ve been doing since day one - and that we continue to do now - is driven by these values. They are: People come first, Do the right thing, In it together, Driven to do more. 

We believe this ethos will help us deliver the services and housing that our customers deserve. Our teams are also working on various new strategies which will be launched throughout this year. Alongside our new corporate plan, which we’ll be launching in July, these strategies will include more detail about what we want to achieve and how we’ll go about doing it. 

We’re already seeing positive outcomes, with our Development and Sales Team achieving 896 new build completions – just shy of its strategy target of 1,000 new homes each year. 

It’s been a fantastic start, but there have been some obstacles along the way. Bringing two organisations together was always going to throw up some challenges that we needed to overcome. 

From working across different systems to holding varying levels of insight and data about our customers, we’ve had to find workarounds and ways to ensure our service provision wasn’t negatively impacted. 

Work is well underway to align our systems and harmonise the way of working across both legacy organisations, which will make life easier for colleagues and help us provide an enhanced service to customers. 

We’re also utilising data, insight and technology to better understand our customers so we can deliver the homes and services they need. We’re moving to a position where our services and communication with customers will be more tailored to their needs, which can only be positive. 

As a larger organisation which will work more efficiently, we think it’s important to retain our local focus. We’re moving towards a regional management model for how our operational teams will work in communities and we’ve even relaunched our neighbourhood walkabouts to make us more visible in neighbourhoods and give customers a chance to engage with us face-to-face. 

Having highly motivated and high-performing people working for the organisation is imperative if we’re to get where we want to be, and we have lots of exciting projects in flight that will help us make that a reality.  

In summary, the last six months have been of a whirlwind of activity, but they’ve also been extremely positive. I’m immensely proud of every single colleague at Amplius for the work they’ve done to get us to this point. 

We know there’s more to do, but we’ve ensured the organisation is in a strong position to deliver real benefits and improvements for our customers so that we can continue to provide homes and services that make a difference.