Our Purpose
It is our strategic intent and organisational purpose and values to invest in communities and neighbourhoods to:
- make a positive difference to people’s lives
- enable people to feel proud of where they live
- enable people to feel safe where they live
- enhance the quality, attractiveness and sustainability of urban living
- provide greater housing choice and flexibility for people on lower incomes.
Mercian aims to provide a key contribution to improving the quality of life for many people in the region. Everything we do is underpinned by our vision of ‘helping develop communities people take pride in’ and we are very passionate about this.
Mercian is a versatile and vibrant agent of social investment and change in the West Midlands. We are a people focussed organisation that respects diversity and provides excellent homes and services to meet needs of local communities.
Working in partnership with others, Mercian develops high quality mixed tenure homes and home ownership initiatives to create choice for people whose options in the housing market are limited, building a sense of pride and ownership in homes and neighbourhoods.
Over the long term Mercian will invest time and resources to work with residents and partner agencies to create safe communities, to build employability, to open up access to services and to ensure a sustainable local environment.
As a not for profit, social business any surpluses we make are reinvested for the benefit of our present and future customers as well as local communities.
The people who live in a neighbourhood or community know best what needs to be done to improve services and improve people’s lives. Tenants and home owners are therefore at the heart of our operations.
Our Vision
We want to focus everything we do on investing in communities people can take pride in. We believe we will achieve this by:
- enabling individuals and families to achieve their housing needs and aspirations
- delivering excellent services and quality homes that provide our customers with choices to meet their lifestyles, making a real difference to the local communities in which we work
- providing our staff with a stimulating and rewarding work environment in which they can help to achieve the Association’s social purpose.
This document sets out our vision and the focus of our activities to 2010.
Our Strategic Objectives
- To be a customer driven provider of excellent services
- To increase the size and value of our property portfolio
- To develop profitable commercial activities to support the core business
- To focus on the needs of neighbourhoods and related regeneration opportunities
- To increase the size of our affordable home ownership and affordable finance operations
- To exemplify good governance and management of the organisation in the spirit of continuous improvement
- To stimulate and enable all staff to give their best to their work.
Mercian currently owns 3,300 homes and provides services to around 10,000 people and families across the West Midlands region. Majority of our homes are located in the local authorities of Birmingham, Walsall and Coventry. View a map of our locations.
We employ about 100 highly qualified staff who aim to deliver best service to all of our customers. Everyone in Mercian is committed to ensuring that our customers are well served, satisfied with our services and listened to.
We take our residents’ views seriously and for many years have involved and encouraged our customers to take an active part and influence the way we provide our services. Our Board of Management includes our tenants and we support the Residents Forum which operates within Mercian. Tenant Involvement, Home Owners Involvement and Community Investment sections to read more about our customer involvement initiatives.
Mercian has two subsidiary companies, ART Homes providing subsidised loans and equity release products for repair, improvement and re-location to help people achieve Decent Homes standards and Zenith Development to deliver our development programme of new-build affordable homes.
Mercian is a registered housing association or registered social landlord (RSL). We are registered under charitable rules with the Registrar of Friendly Societies (16836R) and with the Housing Corporation (L0942).