Thrive Homes is a registered social housing provider that owns and manages nearly 6,000 homes throughout Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, delivering much-needed homes for social and affordable rent, intermediate rent, leasehold, shared ownership, and private market rent.
Pennington Choices was appointed by Thrive Homes (Thrive) to carry out a comprehensive Property Compliance Health Check. The aim was to provide an independent, expert assessment of Thrive's approach to managing the big six areas of property compliance: gas, fire, electric, asbestos, water, and lifts. The Health Check offered their Board, committee members, and leadership team a robust, third-party view of where the organisation stood and identified any areas where they could further strengthen their approach.
Our team took time to understand Thrive's property compliance approach as a whole, including its governance structures, strategic documents, compliance systems, and the safety culture embedded across its teams. We conducted a thorough and structured review across the big six areas, examining evidence including monthly compliance reporting, scorecard monitoring, contract management arrangements, and resident engagement activity.
We assessed Thrive's alignment with key legislation, including the Building Safety Act 2022, Awaab's Law, and the Housing Health and Safety Rating System (HHSRS), as well as considering the organisation's strategic documents, such as the Asset Sub-Strategic Plan and Asset Management Strategy. Throughout the process, our consultants worked collaboratively with Thrive's team, ensuring our findings and recommendations were based on our sector expertise and practical insight.
Following our review, we awarded Thrive Homes with a level of substantial assurance, recognising their governance, robust systems, and the strong customer safety culture embedded throughout the organisation. Only medium to low-priority recommendations were identified, focused on further enhancing visibility, documentation, and consistency, which will strengthen Thrive’s compliance once implemented.
“It was a pleasure working with Thrive Homes on their Compliance Health Check. The organisation demonstrated a consistent and robust approach across all of the Big Six areas of compliance, supported by strong governance and a capable team. Most notably, the health check clearly showed that resident safety sits at the heart of everything they do. It was great to further strengthen the relationship between Thrive Homes and Pennington Choices, and a real credit to Thrive Homes to have achieved such a strong level of assurance.”- Neil Richards, Senior Consultant at Pennington Choices
“Working with Pennington Choices has been an extremely positive and valuable experience for Thrive Homes. Their comprehensive landlord property compliance health check provided us with a robust, independent view of our strengths and opportunities, which provides a good level of assurance for our Board and Committee members.
Their team took the time to understand our organisation, our governance structures, and the culture we’ve worked hard to embed around customer safety. Their review was thorough, constructive, and grounded in deep sector expertise. They recognised the robustness of our systems, the strength of our compliance reporting, and the commitment of our people - while also offering thoughtful recommendations that will help us continue to enhance visibility, documentation, and consistency across our operations.
Pennington Choices were professional, collaborative, and easy to work with throughout. Their expertise has strengthened our assurance framework and supported our ambition to remain a sector-leading organisation in customer and colleague safety. We would not hesitate to recommend them to others seeking a rigorous, insightful, and supportive compliance partner.” - Director of Business Assurance and Risk at Thrive Homes