New structure and new look for Kingdom Group

Creative Orange director Les Johnson (left) and Kingdom Group chief executive Bill Banks
Creative Orange director Les Johnson (left) and Kingdom Group chief executive Bill Banks

Kingdom Housing Association, one of Scotland’s longest established housing associations, has revealed a new corporate look to match its new corporate structure.

Group chief executive Bill Banks said: “The new Kingdom Group consists of Kingdom Housing Association, Kingdom Initiatives Limited and Kingdom Support and Care CIC. The different companies operate as independent organisations within the Group structure, working to achieve jointly agreed and complementary objectives.”

He added that the new set-up required a new look and that new logos had been commissioned: “The companies all have their own Boards and this allows an enhanced focus to be applied to their work, where they can dedicate more time to developing the business strategy and continually improving the services to customers.

“We were keen to promote the diverse and wide range of services we provide, but Kingdom has gained an excellent reputation over the years therefore we also wanted to promote them as related companies, which would be associated with the Kingdom name.”

Design agency Creative Orange was selected to design a new look after a competitive tender process.

Director Les Johnson said: “Working with Kingdom is a great experience, they are receptive to ideas and have given valuable feedback along the way which has resulted in the creation of a contemporary, professional brand image to help the Group move forward. The new logo brands for the Group and divisions are a celebration of people coming together for the greater good and supporting one another, a theme which perfectly fits what Kingdom achieves on a daily basis. It’s always great to work with such receptive clients who appreciate good design.”

It was also decided to retain Kingdom’s ‘More than a home’ motto as it emphasises the organisation’s extensive range of services delivered within the communities it serves. But each of the three companies will also have their own straplines.

The new mission statement for Kingdom Housing Association (KHA) is ‘Building homes and communities’.

Freya Lees, chair of KHA, explained: “We are operating in a challenging environment, however we have agreed an ambitious business plan based on us providing around 1,500 new affordable homes over the next five years. We have also agreed to continue enhancing the services to our tenants and customers as part of our participation and performance improvement programmes.”

Freya added: “KHA will continue to provide added value services and community benefits through programmes such as our Fife Works employability project, Care and Repair and our small repairs services and I feel the full range of services we provide help contribute to the Kingdom Groups aim to provide ‘More than a home’.”

KHA is established as a charitable housing association and in 2010 Kingdom Initiatives Limited (KI) was formed as a non-charitable trading subsidiary.

David Little, chairperson of KI, said: “The strapline for Kingdom Initiatives is ‘Streets ahead’. We can undertake work that KHA, as a charity cannot and we are currently developing new housing projects for sale and also for Mid Market Rent (MMR) that will be available to priority applicants.

“MMR is an affordable alternative to private sector renting and our new homes are being built to Kingdoms high quality standards and will help meet the growing demand for people who need affordable housing, who may struggling to access home ownership or alternative tenures.”

David added: “We currently manage around 300 mid-market rental properties and feel the services and homes we offer provide a very high standard, which reflects the aim of KI to be ‘Streets ahead’.”

The latest member of the Kingdom Group is Kingdom Support and Care (KSC) CIC which was formed as a subsidiary in 2016.

KSC is registered as a Community Interest Company and became operational on 1 April 2017, when the support and care staff from KHA transferred to the new company. KSC will continue to deliver the full range of support and care services, that were previously managed by KHA, to over 250 service users.

The new company aims to deliver ‘Great support, great lives’ and at the recent launch of the new company, Charles Milne, chairperson of KSC, said: “Those of us working in the housing and social care are continually facing challenges, particularly around funding and when we decided to form Kingdom Support and Care we took the view that we needed to let our Support and Care service address the challenges head on and allow the service to stand on its own and develop different approaches and solutions.”

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