Image: School children help to celebrate the construction of new homes for social rent on Newcastle's Byker Estate
Growing together
Karbon Homes ensures each opportunity for acquisition or development aligns with its overall mission by asking five key questions
GROWTH, REGENERATION & DEVELOPMENT
Paul Fiddaman
Group Chief Executive, Karbon Homes
Paul Fiddaman
Group Chief Executive, Karbon Homes
Issue 77 | April 2025
Karbon Homes formed in 2017 when three housing associations in North East England came together with a shared desire to play a bigger role in providing good-quality, affordable homes for the region. All three were passionate about balancing a sound business head with a strong social heart when achieving this mission and were governed by the philosophy ‘we’re about people and housing – in that order’.
Fast-forward to 2025, and Karbon, which now owns and manages 34,000 homes across the North East and Yorkshire, remains true to these roots and is led by this philosophy when it comes to growth. Growth remains firmly linked with our overall mission, providing customers and communities with the strong foundations they need to help them reach their full potential.
Despite a challenging environment, with rising inflation, contractor uncertainties and difficulties in supply chain, we’ve continued to grow through the development and acquisition of hundreds of homes across the regions.
We don’t take decisions around new opportunities lightly; it’s not just about getting bigger for the sake of it, that doesn’t do anything for us as an organisation.
Number of homes owned and managed by Karbon across the North East of England
When exploring potential opportunities, here are our five key questions:
1 Does it make sense geographically? We’re proudly northern and therefore new partnerships should either consolidate or incrementally extend our existing footprint. This in turn enables more efficient service delivery and allows us to focus on communities where we have a connection and a presence. A greater concentration of homes in a community allows us to have a greater impact through our investment in both our homes and the place.
2 Does it make sense financially? We look for partnerships that will enable us to deliver more together than we could individually. This may require targeted efficiencies over time, to ensure we avoid duplication and maintain a lean overhead structure to devote as much capacity as possible to core services. This approach enabled us to generate enough financial capacity to double our development programme in Karbon’s first three years and has ensured we have continued to thrive in the economically turbulent years since.
3 Is it a good cultural fit? It’s not always easy to determine cultural compatibility without a good understanding of how an organisation is run and how engaged and committed its colleagues are. As housing associations, the way we each describe who we are and what we do is inevitably fairly similar, so it’s important that we spend time getting to know potential partners to ensure our values and culture are genuinely aligned.
4 Can we help them build on their strengths? It’s important we understand the skills and experience a potential partner could add to the group. How can we learn from each other and grow together? This in turn can strengthen the group’s offer and ensure we maximise the benefit of mergers for our customers.
5 Will it bring benefits to our existing customers? The final and most important consideration. Whether in terms of greater capacity for investment in homes and services, or the ability to deliver more new homes, it’s a key focus when developing a partnership business case and we wouldn’t progress without clarity on how those benefits can be delivered.
Measured growth
The net result of our approach to growth is an organisation with healthy finances and strong customer satisfaction, not an easy feat against a backdrop of some particularly turbulent times for the sector.
Although size is no guarantee of performance, this pattern of measured growth is an important part of the Karbon story and has enabled us to remain efficient and locally responsive while we channel the benefits of our increasing scale.
“This approach enabled us to generate enough financial capacity to double our development programme in Karbon’s first three years.”
