A welcome from our CEO

Welcome to this year’s Limelight customer magazine,

As we head towards Christmas, I’m sure many of you will have mixed feelings about the season. Not only is it an enjoyable time of year but a costly one too. With every-day living costs at an all-time high, and prices continuing to rise, concerns about making ends meet are dampening what should be a joyous time.

I’m sure you will also have seen the recent news of the nationwide social rent increases, which the UK government has capped at 7%. While this is well below inflation, this will nonetheless be an additional strain on some households. With money so tight for everyone, we will endeavour to support you as much as we can and anyone who may be struggling, I ask you to reach out to our income team as they have the knowledge and resources to help you.

While we always try our hardest to make your funds stretch as far as possible, more recently we have been looking to see if there are any further opportunities for us to make cost savings. Doing things differently is part of that! You may have noticed that we have been introducing all sorts of new digital opportunities, including this magazine, which is now digital only. This has obvious advantages; it’s much more environmentally friendly and there are no postage or printing costs to pay.

In this edition, you’ll also see where some of these savings are going to. Supporting our customers and communities in these challenging times is our top priority and we’re keen to make sure we’re able to do that as much as we can.

One particular story that made me proud is our Springboard Heroes Awards. You really got behind this campaign and voted in your hundreds for the community group that you thought should receive our £1,000 prize fund. All the nominees do brilliant work in our communities and deserved to win but see who came out on top - the fund could not have been better awarded at this moment in time.

In addition to our existing Springboard grant programme, we have been able to increase our customer support fund over the past few months, thanks to a social value contribution from our partners at RISE. The fund is there to help customers who are really struggling to make ends meet. You can find details about this and all the other funds and assistance we have available on our cost of living page.

I want you to know that we are pulling together with all our partners across Salford, with our time, resources and funds, to support customers where possible in these difficult times.

There are plenty of examples of our partnership-working in this edition, with some great people featured, including our amazing customers and Salix Homes colleagues front and centre. I hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I have.

Until next time, I wish you a happy Christmas and better 2023,