Standard and Poor’s (S&P) have announced that RHP Group has maintained a credit rating of A+ (stable).
The 'A+' rating reflects the Group’s strong financial management, which has continued throughout Covid-19 and is underpinned by high-quality assets and an experienced management team.
In a statement released by S&P they commented: “Despite the headwinds caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, we expect RHP to deliver its five-year strategy, focusing on its development program, and to continue to invest in improving customer service and digitization. RHP's use of smart technology and its emphasis on cost savings have helped it build its financial resilience. As a result, it should be able to address the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the rent cuts and welfare reforms over the past few years, and still maintain a low operating cost per unit.”.
Over the past 12 months, RHP has continued to expand our development programme, providing more homes for Shared Ownership as well as for social rent. We’ve also been exploring options of how we can meet the needs of the ‘intermediate market’ through modular construction.
RHP’s Executive Director of Finance, Corinna Bishopp comments: “We’re delighted to have maintained a strong rating particularly through these tricky economic times. We’re conscious of the financial impact that COVID-19 has had on many of our customers and continue to look for ways to offer support and guidance with anyone struggling to pay their rent. Although we’ll move forward with caution during this period, we’re confident we can still achieve our ambitious goals as an organisation and continue to play our part in helping to solve the housing crisis”.
Now into the third year of our five-year strategy, we aim to build 1,000 new homes by 2023. Our investment in our current homes will focus on improvements around Health and Safety with a large-scale sprinkler programme due to complete next year. We’ll also continue to invest in technology so we can keep improving the digital services on offer to our customers and will remain focussed on being an inspiring place to work.