Andium Homes currently manages more than 4,900 properties, providing homes and landlord services for over 10,000 islanders. Now at the helm of the affordable housing provider is Lindsay Wood, who was previously its chief finance and operations officer.
Mrs Wood, who has been with Andium since its incorporation in 2014, took up her new position in April following the retirement of Ian Gallichan – who served as CEO for more than a decade.
She spoke to Express about the responsibility of looking after the housing of one-in-ten islanders…
What are some of your priorities within the role?
Andium is here to provide rental opportunities, purchase opportunities and to deliver more homes. So my priorities will be building on all three of those, as well as our fundamental purpose, which is to deliver government priorities.
In terms of rental, the key priorities are providing good quality homes that are well maintained. I’ve also set up a function to hear the client voice more clearly, and that will involve us surveying all of our clients this year, as well as looking at our data.
Our data tells us a lot about what our clients contact us about, when they’re contacting us, how – also when they’re not contacting us that tells us something. So we’ll be undertaking lots of activities to hear what clients have got to say and then developing our services in response to that.
In terms of purchase opportunities, we’re continuing to deliver the Andium Homebuy product, which allows people to buy a property at 75% of the purchase price with no deposit required.
And in terms of delivering more homes, we do have over 800 currently on site or in contract at the moment. These are being delivered over the next few years and the priority is ensuring that they’re delivered smoothly.
Also letting people know about these opportunities, because there’s never been a time where there’s been more opportunities for people to access our homes for both purchase and rental. Part of my priorities is letting people know about that.
With the Bridging Island Plan due to expire this year, do you foresee any difficulties around getting sites earmarked for development?
We have certainly got a number of homes coming through the pipeline at the moment, so over 800 on site. But that doesn’t mean we’re finished. We’re going to keep delivering the new homes that the island needs.
Part of the political process will be to consider whether any fields need to be rezoned, but that would be part of the political decision making.
Will you be closer to that decision making process now that you are CEO, such as through conversations with the Environment Minister or Housing Minister, for example?
My role is certainly going to evolve, coming from previously being the chief finance officer to now being CEO.
I’m sure we will have conversations, but it will certainly be a political decision. We’re here to provide information to inform such decisions, but it’s certainly a political decision.
What’s the feedback been like with purchase schemes for islanders who need financial assistance, such as First Step?
First Step has been a success. We’ve had three tranches so far with the original budget of 10 million pounds – this is the Housing Minister’s scheme that we’re administering on his behalf – and it’s been well taken up by people who are now homeowners who otherwise wouldn’t be able to be. There is a fourth tranche on its way.
We’re still seeing strong demand for our Homebuy products as well, we offered 54 homes at Maisons Les Arches for sale, and within the first week, we had sales agreed of almost 50 of those.
So we know that there is appetite out there, particularly when we’re offering homes with support and without the need for a deposit.
Are you confident that Andium will be able to meet demand following widening of the eligibility criteria?
We’re here to deliver the homes to meet the demand that’s presented to us on the two waiting lists.
So we’ve got the affordable gateway [rental] and we’ve got the affordable purchase pathway for purchase.
We are equipped to continue to deliver new homes into the future
Andium ceo lindsay wood
Because we’ve been successful in delivering more homes, that supported the Minister in meeting his policy objectives to broaden access. So that’s happening almost in tandem.
It is a political decision about whether that’s extended further, but certainly, as the demand is there, we are equipped to continue to deliver new homes into the future.
What would you say are the challenges facing Andium?
One of the challenges I would like to overcome is how people view social housing on the island, because social housing provides a very important safety net and it will always continue to do that.
But because of the establishment of Andium and the number of new homes we’ve delivered, it is much more than that now and the criteria has grown – both for rental and for purchase.
There’s people who perhaps don’t associate themselves with being an Andium customer, who perhaps could be and could benefit from the products we’re offering.
There’s people who are starting to lose faith in the property market and it’s actually causing them to decide whether they want to leave the island or not.
It may be now that they do meet the criteria and that we do have opportunities available for them, that they won’t need to wait a long time for.
I’ve been encouraging people to look at the criteria and what we’ve got available, because there may be solutions for them that they don’t realize are there.
Sometimes people have an idea of what services Andium provide and what they feel social housing is, but actually it’s moved a lot in the time that Andium has existed.
With all the new delivery we’ve got, we’ve also got a good variety of opportunities for people to buy or rent apartments and houses.
