About Northwards Housing

Robin has led Northwards Housing since its creation. As the CEO, he ensures that he knows everyone's name, and each year sends everyone a personally signed birthday card. It's the small things that he does that make the biggest impact. Spending time at the team meetings, his weekly Yammer blog, listening to people's views over a cup of tea, making sure that his door is always open so anyone can drop in and share ideas or have a discussion.

Northwards Housing promote better health and offer quarterly health initiatives such as free flu jabs, signposting people to health websites, raising awareness of mental health linked to national campaigns, providing advice on healthy eating and tips to prevent colds and flu. The company also run a Global Corporate Challenge – this 100 day challenge is the opportunity for their teams to sign up to compete against each other and other organisations around the globe in trying to achieve a daily target of 10,000 steps of physical activity. Access to wellbeing support is available from their Employee Assistance Programme and includes a 24/7 helpline available to everyone. 

Northwards Housing's work on renewables saves CO2 and saves tenants money on their fuel bills, they have won the National Heat Pump of the year award for the second year in a row. They are also working on a proposal to install a micro hydro power generation facility with discussions taking place to jointly develop a community hydro scheme with HMG Paints. They are planning a further phase of PV installations – likely to be another ‘rent a roof’ type scheme. The organisation are currently looking into the possibility of a mixture of ground source and water source heating at Rushcroft and Pevensey Courts, using pipes submerged into Boggart Hole Clough boating lake. They have reviewed their progress in achieving Manchester’s target of a 41% reduction in CO2 by 2020 compared to 2005 levels. When they had their CROHM assessment in 2013 the external assessors calculated that they’d made a 40.1% saving. Since then they have completed other improvements to their properties, and this figure now stands at just over 41% based on work completed or in progress at present. This means that they have achieved Manchester’s target 6 years early. All of their properties have now reached minimum SAP band D, and nearly 10% are at SAP band A or B. They have recently taken part again in the Sustainable Homes Index for Tomorrow (SHIFT) external assessment. Last year they were awarded a silver award, and this year they are hopeful of gold.