Communities
Building sustainable and inclusive communities
Transforming communities
It is important to our customers that their homes are part of a sustainable and inclusive community. To achieve this, we aim to build good quality homes at outstanding value and create attractive neighbourhoods in areas where people wish to live and work.
investment in local communities in 2020
Throughout the development process, we proactively engage with local communities and work closely with planning authorities. We aim to achieve site designs that will provide the appropriate balance of homes and open space and the right mix of house types, providing much needed homes to our local Housing Association partners and private owner occupiers. We aim to enhance biodiversity where possible. From 2022 we will be proactive to ensure compliance with 10% Biodiversity Net Gain. Through the planning process we aim to enhance local facilities providing investment in local infrastructure such as transport, education, retail and recreation facilities. During 2020 we contributed c.£73m to local communities (2019: £94m) through planning contributions to local authorities. Of the money contributed, c.£36m related to education provision.
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Customer Satisfaction
Our 2020 eight-week customer satisfaction score from the HBF is 89.7% (2019: 83.7%), a four-star rating (the threshold for which is 80%). We are pleased with this progress and delighted with the increasing number of customers who would recommend us to a friend.
The Group has a target to achieve and maintain a five-star rating year on year.
The Group is also focused on improving the support it provides to its customers over the longer term and aims to continue to increase its score from the HBF customer satisfaction survey issued to new home owners after nine months of occupation.
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Social Inclusion
All of our developments are designed to promote social inclusion, incorporating housing for families with a broad span of incomes. In 2020, we provided 2,212 homes, or £279m of housing, to our Housing Association partners and a further 221 homes, or £24m of housing, to qualifying customers using affordable Discounted Open Market Value Housing. This is housing that is sold at a discount of around 20-30% to the local market value with the discount remaining with the property in perpetuity. These homes can only be purchased by customers who meet eligibility criteria set by local councils. Overall, we provided £303m of affordable housing for lower income families in 2020 (2019: £428m).
2,212Homes provided to our Housing Association partners in 2020
£303mOf affordable housing provided in 2020
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Building Futures Campaign
2020 was the second year for the Persimmon Charitable Foundation’s ‘Building Futures’ campaign which, in conjunction with Team GB, supports community projects that benefit young people across the UK in the areas of sports, education, arts and health. The campaign held a public vote to select 96 finalists from thousands of nominated charities.
Finalists received a total of £945,000 with the top three winners in each category receiving £100,000, £50,000 and £20,000 donations respectively. Beneficiaries included hospital charities, local sports groups, eco-activity centres and refugee sports groups. The remaining 87 finalists received a donation of £5,000 each. During 2020, Building Futures donated over £1m to c.135 local good causes.
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Supporting our Communities
We continued to support the communities most affected by Covid-19 through our charitable giving and activity.
We set up an employee volunteering programme for those able to give their time to help the NHS and local communities.
Our Community Champions initiative also supported those groups most affected by the pandemic, in particular the over-70s, with charitable donations over a six-month period.
In 2020, £740,000 was donated to local community groups and charities through the Community Champion initiative, with a total of c.£2m donated through Persimmon Charitable Foundation to c.900 charities and good causes across the UK.
The Group also signed up to the Covid-19 Business Pledge supporting colleagues, customers and communities through the crisis.
c.£2mDonated to c.900 charities in 2020
Targets
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We will positively transform communities directly connected to Persimmon’s activities.
UN SDG alignment
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Material issue | Target | How we will achieve it |
| Customer satisfaction | Achieve HBF five star rating on the eight-week customer survey scores year-on-year. | Investment in customer services initiatives and procedures to ensure continuous improvement in performance | |
| Social value | From 2022, be proactive to ensure compliance with 10% Biodiversity Net Gain (expected during 2023). | Proactive management ahead of legislation to ensure our sites transition as soon as possible. | |
| From 2021, aim to review all non-developed land to identify opportunities to improve biodiversity. | This will include identifying a portfolio of sites for biodiversity enhancements. | ||
| We will create an internal Persimmon Way framework for developments focusing on wellbeing and social value. | Framework for internal purposes to be introduced to incorporate best practice guidance. |
Latest Reports
