Aligning a vision for the future

Colchester Borough Homes (CBH) is a not-for-profit organisation managing social housing and community services across Colchester. With a diverse stakeholder base and strong community impact, CBH required a future-facing strategic plan to guide their next five years, ensuring clarity, alignment, and accountability across the organisation and its wider audiences.

Objective

To co-create and communicate a five-year strategic plan (2022–2027) that reflected CBH’s organisational vision and social value, aligned internal leadership, and engaged the wider community. The final document needed to serve as both a business tool and a community-facing reference point for inclusive growth, housing equity, and local empowerment.

Strategy

We embedded ourselves within CBH as an impartial, strategic partner—facilitating consultation, challenging assumptions, and synthesising diverse inputs into a unified vision. Working closely with leadership and key stakeholders, we structured the strategy around accessible, community-first principles. Clear objectives, measurable outcomes, and guiding values were developed to ensure accountability and transparency.

Impact

• A clear, accessible five-year strategy that balances operational goals with social responsibility

• Strategic alignment across leadership, with inclusive stakeholder input

• Framework for impact measurement across housing, community, and environmental initiatives

• Next phase in development: multi-channel rollout and communications plan to embed the strategy across Colchester’s communities