Attaining and Exceeding Targets

Andrew Jenkins - Chief Executive

The publication of the Annual Report is a milestone in our YMCA’s life with considerable reflection upon our performance over the previous 12 months.

Of course we are constantly monitoring and measuring throughout the year to see if we are meeting the targets and budgets established in our Strategy and Business Plan. The Report is a summary of all that detailed internal auditing and in this case applies to the year up to March 31st 2008. We have stayed with a formula we found very helpful last year. We start by establishing the problem we are trying to tackle; then go on to explain what we set out to achieve and how we went about it; concluding with the measured results of that work.

So how well did we do? There are three main ways we have considered this – statistically through all the graphs and tables that appear throughout the Report; financially through the accounts and pie-charts towards the end of the Report; and in service users’ personal testimonies in the middle two pages. Statistically we have attained and in some cases exceeded our targets in 2007/ 2008 – notably with occupancy, rent collection, support assessment, reactive repair responses, complaints response time and very importantly, customer satisfaction as assessed through the regular surveys.

Financially it was also a successful year with a reasonable surplus which was planned to make up for the small operational loss in 2006/ 2007 and to prepare for significant expenditure in 2008/ 2009. We are fortunate to receive a large revenue grant from the Welsh Assembly which enables us to operate in the way we do, but we have always to be careful in financially uncertain times, especially as that grant represents 42% of our income. It is however, those personal testimonies which I am sure that we will all remember. And we are very grateful again this year to another three of the people who have experienced our service first hand, for sharing their stories with us all here.

During the year we were delighted to be presented with the Pat Chown Award at the Community Housing Cymru conference. This is awarded for innovation in housing and in our case was for our Work Incentive Scheme which has become one of our most rewarding and successful schemes at the YMCA. During the year our efforts were also recognised through our achievement of Gold status in the YMCA Wales’ Quality Standards Programme. In the meanwhile we are still of course an “Investor in People” – with the next review in 2008/ 2009.

New work included the setting up of a pilot Private Rented Sector (PRS) scheme to assist hostel residents with their move-on to permanent housing. By the end of the year a number of people had been housed this way and the Scheme was extended. Other plans to extent our housing stock however did not come to fruition. A great deal of time and effort has gone into resident and tenant involvement through the Tenant Participation Advisory Service (TPAS) resulting in special consultation events and the setting up of the Tenant and Resident Involvement Group (TRIG) which meets monthly.

In conclusion may I thank the members of the Management Committee who meet regularly and serve in a voluntary capacity throughout the year, for their support and service and especially of course the Chairman, Mr Robin Wynne-Hughes. I add a big thank you also to the staff who through team effort share in the success of the last twelve months.