Bromford Group

Bromford

Formation	1963 (1963)
Type	Housing association
Purpose	Housing management, affordable home development, housing related support.
Headquarters	Tewkesbury
Location	Tewkesbury
Region served	Central England and South West
Chief Executive	Robert Nettleton
Staff	1800
Website	www.bromford.co.uk

Bromford is a housing association providing affordable housing and specialist housing support services. The businesses covers a wide geographical area, predominately Central England and the South West, which includes Gloucestershire, the West Midlands, Shropshire, Staffordshire, Herefordshire, Worcestershire, Northamptonshire and Buckinghamshire. Bromford also incorporates Bromford Homes, an outright sale business arm providing shared ownership homes to assist private/social renters move onto the property ladder.

In July 2018, Bromford successfully completed a partnership with South West-based Merlin Housing Society to create a new organisation which retained the Bromford name. As of 2024 Bromford owns and manages around 47,000 homes and provides services for approximately 110,000 people living in those homes. Bromford's 2023 - 2027 Strategy sets out its goal to build 11,000 new homes by 2030 and to be the leading developer of affordable homes in Gloucestershire and the wider M5 corridor.

History

In 1918 rented housing comprised 70% of the market but only a fraction of these homes were deemed to be ‘affordable’ or ‘social’. There were a number of charitable housing bodies such as the Guinness Trust and Peabody Trust, and some industrial companies who supplied rented homes for their workers but they were relatively small in number. Local authorities only started to provide rented homes in any volume after the Great War. The development of new affordable housing by housing associations (HA) was an objective of the established charitable organisations such as Peabody and Cadbury but they expanded only slowly until the 1960s.

Bromford Housing Association Limited, named after Bromford Bridge railway station in the Bromford area of Birmingham, was formed by a group of housing sector professionals in 1963. They formed a management committee run by quantity surveyor and Chairman Charles Bucknall, estate agent Robert Oulsnam and solicitor Keith James. In order to take advantage of loans from the new Housing Corporation an entirely new association had to be formed as a ‘society’. This became ‘Second Bromford Housing Society’.

Bromford's first scheme was built at West Heath Road in Birmingham.

Leadership

Bromford's management team consists of CEO Robert Nettleton, chief customer officer Paul Coates, chief investment officer Martyn Blackman, chief information officer Dan Goodall, chief risk officer Heather Richardson and chief finance officer Paul Walsh.

Board Members

Bromford adopts the UK Corporate Governance Code and is made up of two executive and six non-executive directors. These are:

• Chair - Steve Dando
• Neil Rimmer
• Richard Bird
• Dame Sandra Horley
• Charles Hutton-Potts
• Jerry Toher
• Chief executive - Robert Nettleton
• Chief finance officer - Paul Walsh
• Company secretary - Sarah Beal

Finances

At the end of the 2023 - 24 financial year, Bromford recorded a turnover of £314m, and a net surplus of £67m (up from £64m the previous year). In January 2024, Bromford raised a further £129m of investment through two new revolving credit facilities from Lloyds Bank and Barclays.

In 2023/24, Bromford invested £299m in completing 1,191 new affordable homes, 256 of which were built utilising funding from Homes England and 551 were for social rent, making it the country's biggest builder of social rent homes.