Corporate report

Homes England Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Report 2024 to 2025, accessible version

Updated 6 September 2024

Annual Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Report 2024 to 2025

Published 5 September 2024

Introduction

We want everyone to thrive.

We know that a diverse and inclusive organisation empowers teams to perform better. Our diversity of backgrounds, experiences, perspectives and ideas provides a richer platform for us to do things differently and challenge the status quo.

Introduction from the Board Sponsor and Chief Executive Officer

Lesley-Ann Nash, Board Sponsor

This is our second Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) report. Through this report we will share the objectives we set for ourselves in 2020, our progress in achieving the objectives, our learning in the process and our strategy moving forward.

We’re working to make Homes England a place where everyone can find the opportunity to succeed. We are integrating diversity and inclusion into everything we do to lead by example and to excel in fulfilling our obligations under the Public Sector Equality Duty.

We also know that meeting these responsibilities alone is not enough to meet the objectives we have set for ourselves. This report outlines the steps we will take to go beyond our statutory obligations. We want to create a culture of acceptance, inclusion and belonging where our differences and similarities are celebrated and where we truly reflect the needs of our diverse communities throughout our delivery in housing regeneration and place making.

Peter Denton, Chief Executive Officer

Going forward into 2024 to 2025, our EDI strategy and objectives remain resolute, continuing to build a brilliant place to work.

To ensure that we deliver our objectives, we are realigning our focus and resource to develop our EDI internally throughout 2024 to 2025 so that we are best placed to go on to raise the bar in the housing and regeneration sector.

Who we are

Homes England is the government’s homes and regeneration agency. We drive the creation of more high-quality homes and thriving places so that everyone – no matter their background – has a place to live and thrive. We work in partnership with thousands of public and private bodies including local authorities, home builders, developers, affordable housing providers, commercial real estate companies and financial institutions to make this happen.

Since 2018, our mission has been to increase the supply of quality homes, improve affordability and help create stronger, more vibrant places and communities. We are a national agency with experts based across the country.

Constitutionally, we are a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). Our statutory objects are contained in the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, the legislation creating the Homes and Communities Agency, which in 2018 adopted “Homes England” as its trading name to underpin its mission and purpose.

We’re governed by a Board, appointed by the Secretary of State for MHCLG, and led by our chair, Peter Freeman.

We play a key role in delivering the government’s regeneration and housing agenda. Our ambition is to work in collaboration with equally ambitious partners to deliver the homes and places that our communities need, and to support the regeneration of our towns, cities and rural communities.

We can collaborate in a unique way between government and the public and private sectors. We’re unified by our determination to embrace this crucial opportunity to help solve one of the country’s most intractable domestic policy issues.

Our strategic objectives

We have five interconnected strategic objectives that work together to deliver our mission.

Our mission is:

We drive regeneration and housing delivery to create high-quality homes and thriving places. This will support greater social justice, and the creation of places people are proud to call home.

We will:

• support the creation of vibrant and successful places that people can be proud of, working with local leaders and other partners to deliver housing-led mixed-use regeneration with a brownfield first approach
• build a housing and regeneration sector that works for everyone, driving diversification, partnership working and innovation
• enable sustainable homes and places, maximising their positive contribution to the natural environment and minimising their environmental impact
• promote the creation of high-quality homes in well-designed places that reflect community priorities by taking an inclusive and long-term approach
• facilitate the creation of the homes people need, intervening where necessary, to ensure places have enough homes of the right type and tenure.

2020 to 2024 highlights

Committed to increasing workforce diversity of our overall workforce and leadership profiles to match or exceed Office for National Statistics (ONS) UK averages by 2028.

We shared our ethnicity pay gap for the first time in 2023 for transparency and will use it to focus our EDI efforts.

Committed to eliminating discrimination with our Colleague Networks. We:

• launched a Workplace Adjustment Passport to support colleagues with disabilities throughout their career path
• developed new domestic abuse guidance, raising awareness of the issue of domestic abuse whilst providing practical advice and guidance on how to support colleagues who may be experiencing it.

Increasing graduate recruitment diversity. Offers made to applicants: 60% female, 20% ethnic minorities, 7% with a disability, 53% from lower socio-economic backgrounds.

Colleague recognition. Our Mental Health First Aiders won The Social Impact Award at our Annual Conference for their confidential and professional colleague support which is done on a voluntary basis.

Ensuring that the 2023 Annual Conference was accessible to colleagues, by providing facilities including quiet rooms and online access.

We have designed more robust diversity and inclusion criteria, which our supply chain must meet or commit to if they want to access our frameworks or panels. This was launched as part of our new Delivery Partner Dynamic Purchasing System.

Hold ourselves to account. Our board introduced a new strategic key performance indicator which will measure annually whether colleagues feel we are a diverse and inclusive employer and whether we foster a positive working environment and experience.

Shaping our culture: embedding our six values, supported by our behaviours framework (Respectful, Impactful, Accountable, Innovative, Inclusive, Collaborative).

1. Our approach to Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)

Building a Brilliant Place to Work at Homes England

At Homes England, we strive to be an employer of choice. We actively champion diversity and inclusion through our Homes England values.

We are:

• Respectful: as the core principle, this runs through all our values and behaviours.
• Impactful: we combine our commercial expertise with social purpose to deliver value for money and maximise our positive impact
• Accountable: we are empowered to lead by example, take responsibility for our actions and speak up for what’s right
• Innovative: we are bold, creative thinkers who embrace change, never stop learning and always look for a better way to do things
• Inclusive: we recognise and value everyone as individuals and draw strength from our differences
• Collaborative: we share information, align priorities, and use our collective knowledge and experience to share great results

We know that being a truly inclusive employer with diverse, skilled and highly engaged colleagues is crucial to our success, and that our colleagues are our greatest asset. We also know that a diverse and inclusive organisation empowers teams to perform better. The diversity of backgrounds, experiences, perspectives and ideas will provide a richer platform for us to do things differently and challenge the status quo.

We recognise that our diversity will enable us to best understand the housing and place needs of the communities we serve and in turn help us achieve our mission to drive regeneration and housing delivery to create high-quality homes and thriving places. This will support greater social justice, and the creation of places people are proud to call home.

We welcome everyone who believes in our mission and shares our values, regardless of their age, belief, disabilities, ethnicity, gender identity, maternity status, marital status, religion, sex or sexual orientation.

We want everyone at Homes England to thrive, and this means feeling that they can bring their whole self to work and feel a sense of belonging, knowing that they are valued and play an important part in fulfilling our mission.

2. Our EDI vision and strategy

We published our first Equality, Diversity and Inclusion strategy in July 2020 outlining our EDI objectives up to 2024. We extended the impact of our reach beyond our internal practices including a focus on the partners and industries we work with.

We wanted our five objectives to deliver systematic organisational and cultural change, as well as positively impact the industry and our communities.

Our 2020 to 2024 objectives were:

1. Create a more inclusive colleague experience.
2. Work together to create acceptance and build an inclusive culture.
3. Leadership commitment and action.
4. Work with our partners and suppliers to create a more inclusive industry.
5. Deliver homes for the communities we serve.

Each objective was sponsored by an Executive Director, who played a key role in promoting, advocating and shaping the work.

We have made some great progress on our objectives over the past four years some of our key achievements are shared further in this report.

As well as great progress in some of our objectives, we also learnt the important lesson that we committed to too many priorities without dedicated capacity to meet all of our ambitions when launching our EDI strategy and objectives in 2020.

We know this meant that our progress was slower than our intent and that we need to work harder to measure impact and outcomes.

Moving forward

We are using our experience over the last four years to refocus our strategy going forward. We will focus on annual EDI Reports with clear priority areas and delivery values that are underpinned by a measurable action plan.

In 2024 to 2025, we will make impact through pivoting our focus to internal development and culture so that we are in a strong position to make greater industry impact in the following year and onwards.

Our 2024 to 2025 objectives are:

1. Leadership commitment and action
2. Colleague experience: Building a Brilliant Place to Work

Our priority areas are:

• improve gender: representation, opportunities and pay
• improve ethnicity: representation, opportunities and pay
• improve our equality, diversity and inclusion culture
• disability and carers: improve our support and working environment

Our delivery values are:

• being collaborative
• being respectful
• being impactful
• being inclusive
• being innovative
• being accountable

3. Our progress

We have made some strong progress since we set out our EDI objectives in 2020.

Improved diversity of our workforce across the majority of protected characteristics

Between 31 March 2020 and 1 December 2023, the number of colleagues grew from 1,035 to 1,494.

We collect data from our colleagues, which helps us understand the profile of our organisation and the actions we want to take.

This is collected through self-declaration and whilst we encourage our colleagues to provide their information we also offer the option to use ‘prefer not to say’. As a result there are still some gaps in our data in relation to some diversity strands.

However, when looking at percentages, we are pleased to see the diversity of our workforce increased across the majority of characteristics. An overview of our diversity data, during the reporting period, can be found in the ‘What our data tells us’ section.

Our gender pay gap

This year, as of March 2024, we are proud to have achieved our lowest mean and median gender pay gap since we started pay gap reporting in 2017. Our mean gender pay gap is 10.83% and our median gender pay gap is 7.30%

This represents a positive change and a decrease of 1.69% mean and 3.20% median from March 2023 and a decrease of 7.6% mean and 12.3% median since March 2017. We are pleased to see the progress and recognise that continuing to close the gap will take focus.

We have set ambitious targets to achieve this, committing to decreasing the gender pay gap each year. Our EDI Action Plan will support this achievement.

Our ethnicity pay gap

We voluntarily reported on our ethnicity pay gap for the first time in 2023. This is a core aspect of our ambition and ongoing commitment to fostering a brilliant place to work and inclusive workplace. We have chosen to do this to have greater insight and understanding of what factors are driving any pay gaps and enable us to identify meaningful actions that reduce the gap over time.

This year, as of March 2024, our ethnicity mean pay gap is 14.80% and our median pay gap is 19.04%. This represents a fractional increase of 0.08% from 14.72% mean pay gap and increase of 0.28% from 18.76% median pay gap from March 2023.

These results reaffirm the importance of our efforts to monitor and take action to reduce the gap over time. Our EDI Action Plan ensures that we make collective impact to improve our ethnicity pay gap.

Our graduate programme

One of the key aims of our Homes England graduate programme is to attract diverse talent whilst also supporting social mobility. Our attraction campaign set a high standard for best practice in student recruitment, in terms of inclusion. EDI was considered at every stage of the programme.

Applications from under represented groups increased significantly, demonstrating our improved reach.

2022 compared to 2020:

• 62% increase in applicants from a lower socio-economic background
• 48% increase in female applicants
• 12% increase in applicants with a disability
• 43% increase in applicants with an ethnic minority background

This resulted in offers being made to:

• 60% female applicants
• 20% ethnic minority applicants
• 7% applicants with a disability
• 53% applicants from lower socio-economic backgrounds

These graduates bring a diversity of thought to Homes England helping us to better represent the communities we serve.

New Values and Behaviours

The Shadow Leadership Board reviewed our Homes England Values and in May 2023 our refreshed values were launched shortly followed by a supporting Behaviour Framework in November 2023.

The Values and Behaviours Framework ensure that we collectively advocate inclusion. We embrace and actively champion individual differences in people; their needs, perspectives and experiences, enabling everyone to bring their whole selves to work, so we can achieve our full potential.

We commit to challenging our own and others’ biases. We take positive action to build and nurture a diverse workforce, promoting an equitable and supportive environment in which opportunities are equally accessible to all. They further support us in achieving our EDI objectives through supporting our core principle value of being respectful which runs through all our values and specifically be accountable; empowering colleagues to lead by example, take responsibility for our actions and speaking up for what’s right.

• Respectful
• Collaborative: communicate with integrity, collaborate openly
• Impactful: champion success, be purposeful
• Accountable: lead by example, hold to account
• Inclusive: advocate inclusion
• Innovative: be curious, embrace change

Colleague Networks

Our networks have been instrumental in driving this agenda forward over the past few years with some of their achievements including:

• development of a Workplace Adjustment Passport to support colleagues with disabilities throughout their career path
• development of Domestic Abuse guidance
• became a Tech Talent Charter Signatory
• creation of external networks to improve inclusivity within the property and construction industries
• contributing to the development of a diversity calendar to drive ongoing engagement with colleagues
• sharing lived experiences to raise awareness of issues of difference and promote inclusivity
• organising EDI events for colleagues
• ensuring our new offices are inclusive and accessible
• exploring how we can use procurement and tendering to help encourage partners to think about diversity and inclusion
• ensuring that the 2023 Annual Conference was accessible to our colleagues
• leading EDI recruitment panels for executive appointments such as our Chief Customer Officer, Chief Risk Officer, Chief Property Officer and Chief Investment Officer
• shaping and delivering EDI sessions on new starter inductions, attended by around 840 new starters
• reviewing organisational policies and procedures

Learning and Organisational Development

We introduced a dedicated EDI session on all new starter inductions to ensure that new joiners understand our commitments to equality, diversity an inclusion from the outset. The induction session has been attended by over 840 colleagues to date.

Over the past four years, we have delivered several training sessions tailored to different grades and responsibilities across the organisation. The reach and impact has been inconsistent and on this basis, we commit to introducing a mandatory EDI learning and organisational development programmes in our 2024 to 2025 Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan.

Raising profile and facilitating conversations

We reiterated our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion this year through ensuring that it was a central theme throughout our 2023 Annual Conference for our colleagues.

The conference was opened by a key note speaker who focused on her lived experiences as an ethnic minority woman progressing through her career in banking leadership. Our CEO shared his own lived experiences and why that drives him to ensure we deliver our mission.

This was followed by opportunities to join three EDI focused sessions chaired by our newly appointed Head of Engagement and Inclusion and our Women’s Inclusive Network Chair. We ensured that all of our panels throughout the day were as diverse as possible and that our networks’ feedback was used to make the event as accessible and inclusive as possible.

We commit to ensuring that EDI continues to be a core theme for our Conferences.

Leadership

We have committed to Colleague Network Senior Responsible Officer responsibilities being fulfilled by senior leaders from across the organisation. This ensures that networks have senior level support and advocacy throughout the organisation.

Our board

Lesley-Ann Nash is our board diversity and inclusion sponsor and has supported and advocated for our ambitions beyond the end of the Annual Report as set out in Homes England Strategic Plan 2024 to 2028, and our People and Culture Strategy 2024 to 2028. Our board have committed to:

• strategic KPI 17: Homes England being a diverse and inclusive employer
• a decrease in our gender pay gap each year
• a decrease in our ethnicity pay gap each year
• an increase in the overall percentage of workforce diversity profile each year
• an increase in the senior leadership diversity profile each year

Influencing our supply chain

We have used our position within the industry to encourage our supply chain to do more for diversity and inclusion. We have designed more robust diversity and inclusion criteria, which our supply chain must meet or commit to, if they want to access our Frameworks or panels.

This was launched as part of our new Delivery Partner Dynamic Purchasing System. We assess applicants on the following areas:

• inclusive policies
• inclusive recruitment
• diversity data: collection, analysis and monitoring
• mandatory diversity and inclusion training
• publishing their EDI objectives
• embedding EDI criteria into their own supply chain
• community engagement and inclusive design

Where organisations do not currently meet our criteria, we ask for contractual commitments to have these in place within two years of becoming a DPS member. We will ask for evidence as the organisations bid for our sites. We will provide support to organisations through supply chain diversity forums where organisations will share and learn best practice.

Industry presence

We have improved external presence and have worked towards being seen as a leader in diversity and inclusion matters. This has included:

• sharing our commitments and experiences with our partners and suppliers to support their work
• speaking at external webinars, events and conferences on inclusion
• delivering external training sessions to the property sector on diversity and inclusion and inclusive language, which has received great feedback
• representation on Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Boards for two major publications: Estates Gazette and Inside Housing

4. What our data tells us

We collect data from our colleagues which helps us understand the profile of our organisation and the actions we want to take.

This is collected through self-declaration and whilst we encourage our colleagues to provide their information or use ‘prefer not to say’ option, there are still some gaps in our data.

We are pleased to report that our data demonstrates an improvement in the organisation diversity profile across age, disability, gender, religion or belief and sexual orientation. We have seen a 0.9% decrease in colleagues declaring an ethnicity other than white since 2020. We will ensure that we accelerate the improvement across both our agency and senior leadership diversity profile through our focus on priority areas for 2024 to 2025 as set out in section 2 ‘Our EDI vision and strategy’.

Age

95.6% of our colleagues are aged between 25 and 64. The age groups with the most colleagues remain 35-44 years (30.1%) and 45-55 years (26.7%).

	March 2020	December 2023
under 25	2.7%	3%
25 to 34	20%	21.5%
35 to 44	32.4%	30.1%
45 to 54	29.1%	26.7%
55 to 64	15.1%	17.3%
Over 65	0.7%	1.4%

Disability

Within our organisation, 7.1% of colleagues declared a disability, which is higher than the 5.2% reported in March 2020.

	March 2020	December 2023
No	89.5%	81.8%
Yes	5.2%	7.1%
Prefer not to say	0%	2.3%
Not declared	5.3%	8.7%

Ethnicity

10.5% of our colleagues declared ethnicity other than White with a further 1.7% preferring not to say. This compares with 11.4% and 1.3% in March 2020.

	March 2020	December 2023
Asian or Asian British	6.6%	6.3%
Black, Black British, Caribbean	3.2%	2%
Mixed or Multiple Ethnic Groups	1.4%	1.9%
Other Ethnic Groups	0.2%	0.3%
White	84.4%	79.2%
Prefer not to say	1.3%	1.7%
Not declared	2.9%	8.6%

Gender

The gender records from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) provide the information that there is higher balance of females compared to males in our organisation. This has changed from March 2020 where there was a higher proportion of males.

	March 2020	December 2023
Male	50.4%	48.4%
Female	49.6%	51.6%

Gender identity

We know that gender is not binary and we encourage our colleagues to share their gender identity in our self-reporting system. The proportion of declared gender identity is :

• female 43.7%
• male 39.7%
• non-binary 0.3%

There has been a significant increase in colleagues sharing their gender identity, with not declared decreasing from 29.2% in March 2020 to 15.7% in December 2023.

	March 2020	December 2023
Female	36.3%	43.7%
Male	34.1%	39.7%
Non-Binary	0.1%	0.3%
Not declared	29.2%	15.7%
Other	0.0%	0.1%
Prefer not to say	0.3%	0.6%

Gender identity same as at birth

81.1% declared their gender identity as the same as the sex they were assigned at birth and 0.3% declared their gender identity as different to the sex assigned at birth.

	March 2020	December 2023
No	0.2%	0.3%
Yes	69%	81.1%
Prefer not to say	1.4%	1.4%
Not declared	29.4%	17.2%

Religion or belief

48.4% of our colleagues declared their religion or belief and 31.9% declared no religion.

	March 2020	December 2023
Agnostic	0%	1.2%
Atheist	0%	2.2%
Christian	41.5%	36.3%
Hindu	1.7%	1.9%
Muslim	2.1%	2.9%
No religion or belief	26.7%	31.9%
Other	2.1%	2.6%
Sikh	1%	1%
Prefer not to say	7.4%	6.6%
Not declared	17.4%	13.3%

Answers with minimum response rates at either data point have been grouped to Other for comparison purposes.

Sexual orientation

Of our colleagues, 77.8% declared their sexual orientation as Heterosexual. 4.7% stated that they are Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual or another sexual orientation, an increase from 2.3% in March 2020.

	March 2020	December 2023
Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Self-described	2.3%	4.7%
Heterosexual	74.4%	77.8%
Prefer not to say	3.3%	3.4%
Not declared	20%	14.1%

Senior leadership profile

The below data shows the profile of our senior leadership, this includes colleague grade 19 and above (Executive, Directors, Corporate Directors, Assistant Directors and equivalent).

Age

98.2% of senior leadership are aged between 35 and 65 with 0% under the age of 35 and 1.8% over 65.

	December 2023
Under 25	0%
25 to 34	0%
35 to 44	30.1%
45 to 54	39.8%
55 to 64	28.3%
Over 65	1.8%

Disability

4.4% of senior leadership are disabled with 11.5% not declaring or preferring not to say.

No	84.1%
Yes	4.4%
Not declared or Prefer not to say	11.5%

Ethnicity

85% of senior leadership are from a white background with 11.5% not declaring or preferring not to say. 3.5% are from an ethnic minority background, significantly lower than the 10.5% ethnic minority population across the organisation.

Ethnic minority	3.5%
White	85%
Not declared or Prefer not to say	11.5%

Gender

57.5% of senior leadership are male which is higher than the 48.4% in the overall organisation. There are currently 42.5% of our leadership that identify as female.

Male	57.5%
Female	42.5%

Sexual orientation

2.7% of senior leadership identify as Gay/Lesbian/Bi/Self-described which is lower than across the overall organisation. 15.9% did not declare or prefer not to say.

Gay, Lesbian, Bi, Self-described	2.7%
Heterosexual	81.4%
Not declared or Prefer not to say	15.9%

Our gender pay gap 2024

This year, as of March 2024, we are proud to have achieved our lowest mean and median gender pay gap since we started pay gap reporting in 2017. Our mean gender pay gap is 10.83% and our median gender pay gap is 7.30%

This represents a positive change and a decrease of 1.69% mean and 3.20% median from March 2023 and a decrease of 7.6% mean and 12.3% median since March 2017.

We are pleased that we have made some progress in reducing our gender pay gap over the last four year period, however we know that we must not lose our focus in this area. We will ensure that reducing our gender pay gap remains a priority for our organisation. Internally, we monitor and report progress each quarter. Our annual Gender Pay Gap Report is published alongside this annual report and includes a closer look at our results, progress and action plan.

The gender pay gap is not the same as equal pay. Equal pay deals with the pay differences between men and women who carry out the same jobs, similar jobs or work of equal value. The gender pay gap shows the difference in the average pay between all men and women in a workforce.

We recognise that gender identity is broader than simply men and women. A person’s gender does not always match the sex that they were assigned at birth and is not always binary. While the current gender pay gap regulations require us to report gender in a binary way, we value and welcome colleagues of all gender identities and encourage colleagues to self-declare their gender identity through our HR system.

Mean gender pay gap

	Hourly rate
March 2017	18.4%
March 2018	18.2%
March 2019	18%
March 2020	16.9%
March 2021	13.2%
March 2022	11.59%
March 2023	12.52%
March 2024	10.83%

Median gender pay gap

	Hourly rate
March 2017	19.6%
March 2018	17.5%
March 2019	15.5%
March 2020	15.3%
March 2021	7.9%
March 2022	7.74%
March 2023	10.5%
March 2024	7.3%

Our ethnicity pay gap 2024

The ethnicity pay gap refers to the difference in average earnings between different ethnic groups in an organisation.

Last year we committed to reporting our ethnicity pay gap to help us better understand our current data standpoint, identify barriers and measure our progress. While there is no statutory duty to analyse or report ethnicity pay the government published employer guidance including methodology.

This year ethnicity mean pay gap is 14.80% and our median pay gap is 19.04%. This represents a fractional increase of 0.08% from 14.72% mean pay gap and increase of 0.28% from 18.76% median pay gap from March 2023.

This indicates that the mean or median pay amount is higher for white colleagues than for colleagues from other declared non-white ethnic groups.

Those results reaffirm the importance of our efforts to monitor and take action to reduce the ethnicity gap. This will be a priority in our EDI Action Plan.

Mean and Median Ethnicity Pay Gap Comparison

Mean Ethnicity Pay Gap

	Hourly rate
March 2023	14.72%
March 2024	14.8%

Median Ethnicity Pay Gap

	Hourly rate
March 2023	18.76%
March 2024	19.04%

5. What our people tell us

Our 2023 Let’s Talk colleague engagement survey uses the measure of scores out of 10.

The 2023 results tell us that we’re improving across the three key areas measured since last year:

• Overall survey average score increased by 0.5 to 6.7
• Engagement index increased by 0.7 to 6.4
• Employer Net Promoter Score increased by 10 points to -22
• We have also achieved an increase in colleagues who feel they truly belong here increasing from 6 to 6.5
• An increase in colleagues that feel we value diversity and colleagues who feel we demonstrate a commitment to an inclusive workplace increasing from 6.8 to 7
• Colleagues feel the same when it comes to being able to bring their whole self to work with the score remaining at 7.2

We are particularly proud to continue increasing in the scores for:

• In the last 12 months I have not experienced bullying and harassment in the workplace from 7.9 to 8.3
• In the last 12 months I have not experienced discrimination in the workplace from 8.2 to 8.5

We know that these scores vary when looking at specific diversity profiles within our organisation and that the action plan supporting our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Report will enable us to continue to make Homes England a Brilliant Place to Work for everyone.

6. Looking ahead for 2024 to 2025

The representation of diversity across the organisation and more prominently our more senior grades is something we want to improve. Although we have made some progress, we have much work to do here to ensure that all colleagues are able to thrive and have access to the same opportunities, regardless of any protected characteristics.

A key lesson learned over the past four years is that we committed to too many priorities at once and did not consistently resource our EDI ambitions. This has meant that progress was slow over most priorities and due to the volume of commitments, it has been difficult to measure our success and see what is working and what isn’t. We have made great progress in some areas; however we know that there are other areas where we still have a lot of work to do.

This year, we will reflect on the lessons learnt and ensure we get the basics right internally with a one year plan that focuses on our internal EDI progress so that we can collectively go on to improve EDI in the wider industry in the following year and beyond.

Our 2024 to 2025 objectives

1. Leadership commitment and action
2. Colleague experience: Building a Brilliant Place to Work

Our 2024 to 2025 priority areas

• Gender: representation, opportunities and pay
• Ethnicity: representation, opportunities and pay
• Disability and Carers: improving our support and working environment
• improving our equality, diversity and inclusion culture.

Our delivery values

• Respectful
• Impactful
• Accountable
• Innovative
• Inclusive
• Collaborative

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan 2024/25 (for internal audience)

We are taking positive action to meet our EDI aspiration. The Homes England Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Report 2024/2025 will be supported by our Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan.

This will ensure that we use our collective capacity effectively to make impact in our priority areas.

The action plan will enable both senior leadership and colleagues across the organisation to know how we’ll meet our objectives and their role in the process.

Budget and resources

We acknowledge that budget and capacity were a contributory factor in the slower delivery across our EDI objectives. We therefore understand that our commitment to improving our EDI landscape must be matched with suitable budget and capacity in line with other key areas of delivery.

Governance

We will ensure that our objectives for the year ahead are achieved through robust governance. This will include reporting progress on the Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan as follows:

• monthly reporting in the CEO Board Report
• quarterly reporting to People Executive Leadership Team
• quarterly reporting to Nominations and Remunerations Committee

7. Our Colleague Networks

Our Colleague Networks are the heartbeat of our organisation and play a critical role in shaping our culture.

We are very proud of the work that they do to:

• help us to create a healthy, inclusive and positive working environment where we can all be ourselves, give our best and flourish
• ensure equality, diversity and inclusion is embedded throughout the organisation so that all of our people understand the importance of the agenda and their roles in delivering it
• help us to continuously improve our working environment, policies and processes that affect our people by providing advice and guidance
• help us have the richest possible mix of talent from all demographic groups by working with us to develop our people and ensure that potential colleagues understand the benefits of a career with us
• raise awareness of matters that affect people through the provision of training, events, blogs and articles to our people and wider stakeholders
• ensure that diversity and inclusion remain a core principle in the delivery of Homes England’s role to drive regeneration and housing delivery to create high-quality homes and thriving places. And to support greater social justice, and the creation of places people are proud to call home.

Our networks have developed over the past four years with more than 1,250 members across them.

The networks’ role is to create safe spaces for members, raise awareness and communicate with the wider organisation to help educate, steer equality, diversity and inclusion priorities and empower colleagues to be allies to one another. Each network is sponsored by a senior leader.

We have 11 Colleague Networks within the organisation:

• Women in Digital Network
• BAME Network
• Build Together and Friends Network
• Dignity and Respect at Work Champions
• Disability and Carers Network
• Early Careers Network
• Faith Network
• Future Leaders Network
• Mental Health First Aiders
• Neurodiversity Network
• Women’s Inclusive Network
• Women in Digital Network

8. Leadership commitment

We know that leadership accountability is essential to the successful delivery of our objectives. We want our commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion to be led from the top. Our Board and Executive Directors lead the delivery of the strategy and will follow up their commitment with actions, working together to help build belonging at Homes England.

• Peter Freeman CBE — Chair
• Lesley-Ann Nash — Board Sponsor
• Peter Denton — Chief Executive Officer
• Marcus Ralling — Interim Chief Investments Officer
• Kirsty Shaw — Chief Operating Officer
• Mike Palin — Executive Director of Markets, Partners and Places
• Alison Crofton — Interim Chief Property Officer
• Ian Workman — Chief Customer Officer
• Mike Wiltshire — Director for Strategy, Research, Analysis and Sponsorship