24.12.21
With Mark Dickinson, Lifestory Group CEO
There’s a natural desire to reflect as each year draws to a close. As a company, it can be easy to fall into the trap of evaluating performance purely on financial perspectives. Whilst businesses have become more progressive, and many may talk easily and expansively about the “triple bottom line”, as we end 2021 it’s becoming far easier to reflect on the very many elements that must be in place for property developers to successfully contribute to society.
Through the course of this year, the environment has figured large with extreme weather events, COP26 and an ever increasingly vocal protest movement all focusing our minds. The pandemic has continued to highlight the importance of wellbeing and how the built environment can influence and support this. Community interaction, housing affordability, planning gain, density and design are all still very much issues that draw public and political attention.
As an industry we have much to react to and we will be judged by that reaction.
Building and then maintaining trust has never been more important; accountability is unavoidable and should be welcomed.
For Lifestory, 2021 has been a year of consolidation; growth is not necessarily linear, sometimes it requires going back to basics, securing foundations, regrouping the team and fixing strategy. These things are now all in place. One thing though that didn’t need fixing was culture. Having great people, with true emotional integrity and tenacious application certainly helps to make success a far more likely outcome. To all of our team, a big thank you for the hard work throughout this year.
Lifestory continues to place customer experience at the very forefront of our aims. We are in the strong position of being able to plan, design and build a huge variety of homes…….be these affordable, open market for sale or for rent. We cater for customers from millennial first time buyers to those looking to live independently and down size in later life. With this flexible, multi tenure approach, we pride ourselves in being able to work with local communities and local planning teams to seek the best outcome for regeneration in our towns and cities.
We strongly believe that this is a cocktail for future success and we look forward to continuing to be at the forefront of the changing narrative within our industry.