Charlie meets

Charlie: Everyone needs a safe and sustainable home. So I'm here today in South London, Lambeth, to meet with the CEO and the neighbourhood manager of The Hyde Group, one of the leading housing associations in the UK and one of the most important clients of Lloyds Banking Group.

Charlie: It’s great to be here, so thanks for the time. And we're sitting in this amazing location in the middle of the estate, in this Hyde Group office with Hyde Group colleagues sitting right in the middle of the residence. How does this feel working in the location?

Lucy Arscott, Neighbourhood Manager at The Hyde Group: We've got really positive feedback and the residents are happy that we're more on the front line. They get to see us. They can knock the door.

Andy Hulme, CEO at The Hyde Group: We've always been around, but to be in the middle of the estate I think is massive.

Charlie: So Lucy, you’re a neighbourhood manager. What would a normal day be like here at Hyde?

Lucy: I get here about 8:30 in the morning. So I'm basically front line. I'm the person that they'll see out in the street and they might stop me to say “Oh, my doorbell’s not working,” or “Can you help me with the front door?” Mostly just helping with repairs and general enquiries, listening to people with their struggles to see what I can do to help them and which direction I can point them in. I really enjoy my job, mostly because I'm passionate about helping people.

Charlie: How many residents will you see every day?

Lucy: I would say between one to fifteen a day.

Andy: It's a huge hotbed of activity. We have 2,500 homes, about 5,000 people living within 400 metres of here. And it's constantly busy, and it's about supporting them when it goes wrong, and our job is to fix it and make sure that those services and products are there. And that's when the neighbourhood managers and the team step in to support to get things back on track. And it keeps us busy, right? It keeps us on our toes!

Lucy: Yeah, I do a lot of steps a day!

Andy: I think what's maybe different as a social landlord versus a private landlord is our job is to be there at that time of need and to be on the ground to support our residents, to support our neighbours. Our residents are no different than you and I. We shop in the same shops, we drink in the same pubs. They know the support that we can offer and also the support that's available more broadly.

Lucy: We also have a Hyde Foundation Team that can help them with looking for jobs or helping with bills.

Andy: The engagement, the conversations, the chats and the friendships we've built are powerful.

Charlie: It looks like you've been investing in the estate.

Lucy: We've recently refurbished the basketball court at the community centre, and a lot of the children on the estate have been so excited.

Andy: It's been amazing hasn’t it?

Lucy: Yeah, 100%.

Andy: We'll spend £900 million over the next five years maintaining and improving homes. That means a dozen community centres and around 100 community spaces. Having somewhere nice to enjoy or seek support makes a massive difference to people’s lives.

Charlie: What are one or two stories where you feel like you've really made a difference to one of the residents' lives?

Lucy: I had a vulnerable resident who was struggling. The path had many holes, and she was a wheelchair user who couldn’t get through. The dustbin men would get in her way. I contacted our repairs team, and she said it was such a great help. I've had grandchildren call up and say, “You helped my grandmother and I really appreciate you,” and that makes me feel like I've done something meaningful in my day.

Charlie: So Lucy, tell me about the community here.

Lucy: Hyde Housing is very diverse – Jamaicans, Nigerians, Nepalese, Chinese, Indians and many cultures. I'm trying to learn Spanish because some of our contractors are Spanish. We also have a 30,000-person waiting list.

Charlie: 30,000 people on a waiting list for Lambeth?

Lucy: Correct. Our main priorities are residents who are vulnerable or coming from domestic abuse. We always try to support them as much as we can.

Charlie: There's kids and there's families here, there must be a real community feeling.

Lucy: 100%. You see families coming together and parents watching over their children in the park. It's lovely.

Charlie: You studied for how long?

Lucy: Two years.

Charlie: Wow. You mentioned the older, more vulnerable residents. How do you support them?

Lucy: They hold a big space in my heart because I no longer have my grandparents. When I meet residents, I always think: what would I do to help my grandmother, my uncle, my siblings?

Charlie: Amazing.

Lucy: I try my best! And I'm getting good feedback so far – so far, so good!

Charlie: I'm here with Andy and Maddie, who head up the social housing practice for Lloyds Banking Group. Great to see you.

Maddie McDougall, Managing Director for Housing at Lloyds Banking Group: I'm proud to support a sector that's so important to the wellbeing of our economy and people.

Andy: Don't forget, 15% of UK residents live in social housing. It's a huge part of our economy and households across the country.

Charlie: As CEO of The Hyde Group, you're responsible for 45,000 homes and 105,000 residents. What's top of your priorities?

Andy: Three core things: keeping customers safe; maintaining, improving and greening our homes; and building new homes. We build about 2,000 homes a year with a pipeline of around 8,000.

Maddie: We've lent £15 billion into social housing over the past five years and £2 billion last year alone in ESG financing. When people think sustainability, they think energy, but it's wider. When you invest £1 in housing sustainability, you save the NHS £7.

Andy: Improving living environments impacts mental and physical health and wellbeing, which saves NHS, police and education budgets. Seventy-five to eighty percent of our homes are EPC C or better. All new homes are EPC A, meaning warm, insulated and environmentally friendly homes – but there's more to do.

Maddie: And that's why you're futureproofing homes, but also improving financial resilience for tenants.

Andy: Yes, and it’s also about skills. We've worked with you on Regeneration Brainery and the Lloyds Digital Skills Academy, ensuring the next generation of workforce can deliver this work.

Maddie: How does nature and biodiversity fit in? We're losing 13% of green urban spaces.

Andy: We're about to launch our biodiversity strategy: more planting, more green spaces. We own a nature reserve and three ancient woodlands. Allotments help people grow food, especially during the cost of living crisis. The more we green estates – swings, playgrounds, basketball courts, trees – the better people feel, interact and thrive.

Charlie: We're calling for a million new social homes over the next decade with Crisis. What more can be done?

Andy: It's a great partnership. There’s a housing shortage, and we already build thousands of homes, but we want to do more. You enable us. We need homes that are available, accessible, and affordable to heat.

Andy: With Crisis and Lloyds working together, it’s a positive call to action.

Charlie: Brilliant to hear. We're committed to doing that with The Hyde Group.

Andy: People forget housing associations are charities. Our purpose is social good and helping residents. Without lenders like you, we couldn’t do what we do today.

Charlie: Farmers are on the front line of food security, land management and the environment here in the UK. At Lloyds Banking Group, we're proud to be the biggest bank for agriculture, and I'm here today at Newlyns Farm to find out more about their business and their role in the community.

So Rob, maybe we could just start with a bit of an overview of the farm, the livestock, the crops you have and the scale of production here.

Rob: So we've got about a thousand acres of a very mixed farm. So we are beef, sheep, pigs and then a bit of arable. My family have been farming on this farm for about 100 years. We have 180 suckling cows producing one calf per year. We've got about 300 ewes, which should produce us about 450–500 lambs per year.

Then we have 100 sows which will produce somewhere between 2000–2500 pigs per year. Our shop’s been going for 19 years, and over those 19 years lots of local businesses have grown up producing food, which is great because we're an outlet for those products. So lots of businesses have grown on the back of our shop really.

The challenges facing farmers

Charlie: What are the challenges? How is it working with the broader family?

Rob: Working in a family business always has its challenges. I'm not going to say that it's always easy, but it's great that my children will hopefully do it at one stage. It's nice to have that continuity.

Charlie: What have been the kind of challenges you've been dealing with in the last few years?

Rob: Cost of living has definitely affected us. Two years ago, the price of fertiliser with the price of electricity went astronomically high, but also the price of wheat went from £180 a tonne up to £300 a tonne. This meant that all of our inputs were really high, but now the price of wheat has collapsed back down again. Fertiliser has come back, but probably not to where it was before.

Charlie: What kind of inflation did you see on fertiliser?

Rob: It went from £250 a tonne to £1000 a tonne.

Charlie: So quadrupled in cost.

Rob: People had to look at their fertiliser usage and actually realise we could get away with using less fertiliser. So I think some of these things have a very positive outcome in the end. You can do things differently and still get good results.

Charlie: You're dealing with massive uncertainty.

Rob: Farmers have always had uncertainty — the weather, for one — and I think farmers as a business have always been fairly good at diversifying and taking opportunities. We're probably quite entrepreneurial in some ways because we've stayed where we are, put down roots and then grown businesses to cope with lots of different things.

Charlie: And then starting to evolve your practices to be more circular, more regenerative.

Rob: Exactly. Historically, all farms were mixed. By mix we mean livestock and arable. And so you get the benefit of both. These cows are obviously out at grass in the summer, but in the winter they’ll be housed inside and they’ll produce lots of farmyard manure. We grow lots of maize and that's a nitrogen-hungry crop, so we put lots of farmyard manure on that before we plant it. So it makes use of everything.

After an arable crop — usually winter barley because it's the earliest to be harvested — we’ll then plant turnips straightaway in July, and they'll feed the animals over the winter and then it will go back into a planted arable crop in the spring.

Charlie: So it really is kind of a circular use of getting the animals to work with the crops and enrich the soil over time.

Rob: Yeah, very much so.

Woodchip burner

Charlie: We're standing here in front of this woodchip and I know you have a woodchip burner and that was one of the ways that you're being more sustainable.

Rob: Yes, we've got about 100 tonnes here. This chip will then feed our biomass boiler so it’s effectively just getting burnt. And the heat from that will heat the five houses on the farm and then two boilers will dry chip, which will produce the electricity for our farm shop.

Charlie: And you have a relationship with the Soil Association, as Lloyds Banking Group has. And I know soil is at the heart of some of the practices around carbon capture, flood prevention and improving biodiversity.

Rob: Through Lloyds, the Soil Association came out and did an audit on our farm and gave us a carbon score, and it's a fairly good score, but there’s definitely room for improvement. And there's lots of cultivation methods that release less carbon into the atmosphere. So it makes us think how we do things.

Charlie: Certainly Lloyds Banking Group are hoping that we might be able to create a carbon credit market off the back of capturing carbon in the soil and actually generate a new source of income for farmers like you.

Carbon credit

Rob: I think farmers would love to have a new income stream, but we're also very aware that as farmers we produce lots of carbon as well. So we've got to be careful that we're not selling all our credits then we don't have enough for ourselves.

Charlie: As we've come out of Europe and the Common Agricultural Policy and the government in the UK is now talking about new incentives for supporting farmers. How's that working and is there clarity around that?

Rob: We all know we're going to lose subsidy connected to production, but now there are schemes where instead of the subsidy being linked to the crop production, it's linked to the environmental benefits. And we've just entered into a countryside stewardship scheme which will last for five years. So every farm will have an area which isn't profitable for production.

It's a corner of a field, it's very poor soil. A lot of our grass has gone into no-input grass which means we can’t put any artificial fertiliser on it and we can't blanket spray it for weeds. We'll get paid to have these things for the environment and it's enabled us to improve the biodiversity of the farm.

Charlie: About 50% of the food that's eaten in the UK is produced in the UK. We need to produce more food with brilliant farms like Newlyns. If you look at some of these options to improve biodiversity or carbon capture, there can be trade-offs with food production. So how are you balancing those broader objectives and still being a great producer of food?

Rob: We've got to produce as much food as we can as a country because there's no point importing food from around the world because they've got the same problems that we have. It's crazy us importing soya from South America when we're planting all of our country into wildflowers.

The farm shop

Charlie: Hi Abby. Rob was saying that for the thousand acres on the farm, he has about four full-time people that work with him. I think you have 90 that work with you in the shop.

Abby: It was very, very small initially, one butcher. The beef, pork, lamb, all comes from the farm. The cookery school opened, that was just an obvious next step. And similar to the café, it's a tasting plate for everything that we're producing for the shop. The ready meals are a big part of it. Everything you see on the deli counter is produced by us as well, so we needed more space and more chefs.

Charlie: And what happened through the last three years?

Abby: During COVID, we shut the shop to the general public because we felt we couldn't keep our staff safe. So we set up eight phone lines overnight. It was all personal so they would ring, speak to somebody and then they’d collect it within an hour. That's probably the hardest four months of our lives.

Charlie: Not surprised, that’s amazing, you totally changed the way you interact with customers.

Abby: Literally overnight, but it meant that nobody was furloughed. People were so resilient. It was a great sense of everyone coming together.

Charlie: I know Rob's the fourth generation farmer in his family to take over the farm. How are you thinking about the next generation in your family and the community and getting them involved?

Abby: Our eldest son’s about to go and study agribusiness management, our youngest is wanting to be a land agent. We have tried to encourage them to not come home too quickly and bring some different skills back to what is an ever-changing business at home. And we also try and do that through apprenticeship schemes. We've got Shannon, who is in a team of eight butchers.

She studies under Jason, who is a master butcher. So it's a great way of her learning on the job. And we have a similar system with our chefs as well.

Charlie: Because you've got a mixed-use farm and then you've got a really significant retail operation, when do you get downtime?

Abby: Not very often. Retail is a way of life, as is farming, but it's a good way of life.

Rob: I think farmers historically have always wanted to look after the environment. We love the countryside, we love our farms. Now there's far more emphasis being put on being sustainable and looking after the environment, but I think it's a balance. We've got to make sure we are profitable and producing food for the country, but also looking after the country itself.

Charlie: Prevention is the best form of defence against fraud. No one knows this better than the City of London Police, who are among the world’s leading experts, both domestically and internationally, in combating fraud, cyber and economic crime.

Nik: The biggest threat to the public now is not only the financial harm caused, but the emotional harm people suffer. Fraudsters apply pressure, rush people into decisions, or find something personal and offer a solution. It’s about helping people understand how criminals manipulate feelings and recognising that moment to stop, think and get help. That’s the way we’re going to protect people.

Gavin: The landscape of fraud has changed significantly in the past four years. Through social media, Facebook Marketplace and auction sites, customers are being duped into making payments to entities like HMRC or even to us as a bank.

Cameron: A recent claim involved a business customer, a sole trader, who had fallen victim to a bailiff scam. She was told to hand over £3,000 or bailiffs would arrive to seize her property. Her father had passed away only two or three months earlier.

It was clear she was still grieving. The fraudster told her the debt belonged to her father and that he had been due in court on the day he died. It was heartbreaking from the start.

At the time, she was with her family accountant, who had worked closely with her father. The accountant took over the call. The fraudster sent fake documentation, including counterfeit counterclaim forms pretending to be from the courts, and the accountant signed off on everything.

Charlie: It’s a harrowing example. The customer was vulnerable, the fraudster was sophisticated, and even the accountant was deceived by realistic documentation and pressure tactics.

Cameron: The customer didn’t realise until a week later. She sent a letter to the courts as part of the supposed counterclaim. The court then contacted her to say they believed she had been scammed.

During my investigation into whether we could refund her, we considered her reasonable belief, the involvement of the accountant and the sophistication of the fraudster.

She did get her money back. There’s a contrast now compared to a few years ago when fraudsters pushed the same tactics repeatedly.

I have another example where a customer nearly lost £171,000. By speaking to her on the phone, we were able to save that money.

Customers are being specifically targeted, which makes it far easier for them to be victimised.

Nik: Technology is evolving. Criminals now use AI to create convincing materials, websites and even videos. This makes our work more complex and gives overseas criminals broader access to global victims. We work closely with the National Crime Agency, overseas governments and foreign law enforcement.

Nik: Tools that send thousands of texts or spoof emails are the enabling technologies we’re targeting with partners. That’s how we’ll make it harder for organised criminals to reach large numbers of victims.

Charlie: What are we doing to keep up with the fraudsters?

Michelle: We use a market‑leading, machine‑learned fraud engine. If frontline colleagues spot something new, we can update the system within hours. The aim is to stay one step ahead and protect customers.

Gavin: Technology helps, but education is crucial. I have two young boys now on social media. They want things instantly and move quickly. We need to influence younger generations and ensure tech and telco companies take responsibility for educating users.

Nik: We’ve worked with the Home Office and NCA on the online fraud charter, helping tech companies understand their role. The new Action Fraud system will make it easier to share information, but those companies must then act on it.

Charlie: Collaboration is vital. We have a relationship with half of UK adults. The insights and data your teams share help us protect customers.

Nik: Public–private partnerships aren’t just about funding. They give access to technical tools like databases or crypto‑tracking systems to trace stolen money.

Charlie: You must need a huge amount of personal resilience to do this job daily?

Nik: Every year, around 300 people reach crisis point because of fraud and the harm they’ve suffered, to the extent they’re at risk of suicide. It reminds me why, with our resources and partnerships, we must do everything we can each day to keep victims safe.

Charlie: The UK has some of the oldest and most poorly insulated housing in Europe, having a big impact on people's physical and financial health. Lloyds Banking Group is a major supporter of social housing and energy‑efficient homes, helping housing associations invest in both.

Charlie: Rashida, you're a senior project manager with Peabody and you lead on all of the sustainability works across the whole estate. What kind of changes are you making to the properties?

Rashida: This estate is in a conservation area, so clearly the outside is protected. We can't touch anything, we can't change anything on the outside, so we have to think about how to improve the property internally and also in areas that are non‑visible. For example, we’re installing the solar panels at the rear of the roof. We’re also adding loft insulation – topping up where some exists, and fully insulating where there is none.

Charlie: And the impact on the residents – the health outcomes, the quality of life – it must be huge.

Rashida: Yeah. We've made their homes more comfortable. In some cases, we're actually providing additional income because we already have surplus energy. They can sell that energy back to their service provider, and that is household income that comes back to them. So we're improving their lives as well.

Charlie: So I've had a chance to look around the estate. How big is the estate?

Christine Wagg, Historian at Peabody: The total estate is 1,200 properties, but quite a number of them have been sold, so Peabody now owns about 800 of them.

Charlie: So when did Peabody take on the estate?

Christine: We took on the estate in the 1960s, and since then we have done quite a lot of improvements to many of the properties because a number of them were not in a particularly good state.

Charlie: And I know someone pretty important opened the estate back in the day?

Christine: Yes, that was the then Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli.

Charlie: And why would he have taken the time to open this estate?

Christine: He was quite liberal in his outlook and progressive in some of the legislation being passed at that time. Also, this was in the days before there was such a thing as council housing, so it was a case of the government looking to private individuals or companies to provide housing that was desperately needed in London as it became more overcrowded.

Charlie: So it really was breaking ground on social and affordable housing 150 years ago.

Christine: Yes, indeed.

Charlie: You must be highly aware of the cost for Peabody and then the return. How do you manage those trade‑offs?

Rashida: It costs a lot, but I believe as a housing provider that believes in doing the right thing, we consider it worth it because we're making the residents happy. Ultimately, we're showing that we can look after our assets and we're adding value.

Charlie: Yeah, and you're massively improving the quality of life and reducing the cost of living in the properties.

Charlie: Quite tight on the arms there, on the shoulders.

Charlie: Now, Peabody has almost 110,000 properties. That's a huge job. How do you think about how much of the estate needs this kind of work?

Rashida: Ultimately, we're driving to net zero. That's the goal. It’s net zero. So we’ve got 2030 and, beyond that, 2050. By 2030, we’re getting the portfolio to a C rating – that’s where Peabody is taking the portfolio. So the whole 110,000 homes need to be there. We've looked at the data and asked, “What do we need to do?”

Rashida (continued): The business is planning really well in terms of how to balance it out – how we get new builds ready for the next 50, 60, 70 years while also continuing with retrofitting. There are challenges in both: for new builds, it’s cash; for retrofit, it’s cash and the fact the homes are occupied.

Charlie: And that’s where Lloyds Banking Group is deeply committed – helping housing associations like Peabody figure out how to finance both new homes and the retrofitting.

Rashida: When you go back and speak to the residents, it makes you very happy because there is a positive impact – not just from doing the work, but from knowing you're changing lives.

Charlie: Now, you started your career in fashion and then shifted into construction, and you've been in construction for 14 years. It can't be an easy profession. Why do you stay?

Rashida: Each time I drive around London with my husband, I go, “Oh yeah, I did that. I did that. Oh yeah, I did that.” That’s how much I love my job. I look at houses as living things. I'm a doctor for buildings.

Louis: The MTC is powering the design and adoption of cutting‑edge technologies and critical skills. We've been a proud partner for over ten years, sponsoring 5000 apprentices. The future of UK engineering and advanced manufacturing is where innovation meets industry.

Charlie: Louis, it’s brilliant to be with you here at the MTC in Coventry. Now, we don’t know each other well enough, but I’m a bit of a tech nerd and it’s like being a kid in a toy store looking around here. I can’t not have the opportunity to talk to you about what’s behind us – this factory in a box.

Louis: This was created as a technology demonstrator to really show the full potential of digital automation and robotics as a whole system. This is a standard 40‑foot shipping container with a full end‑to‑end production line inside that needs no human intervention. All you need is stock in at one side and you’ll get the finished part out the other. This can be put anywhere in the world and controlled digitally from a central dashboard.

There’s a huge variety of applications for this. For example, with seasonal labour and lumpy demand in things like orchard picking – you could ship one of these to an orchard. Apples go in one end, get packaged, wrapped, palletised, and come out the other end ready to ship.

Charlie: Developing the talent of the future, but also the automation and robotics of the future – how do you see those two things coming together? Because at some level they feel like they could be in conflict.

Louis: A lot of companies we work with initially worry that introducing automation and robotics will take jobs away. But that’s not what we’ve found, and other countries like Germany show the opposite. In the UK, we’re around 25th in global adoption of robotics.

The more you adopt automation, the more jobs it creates. It removes people from dangerous, repetitive, dirty jobs, and enables higher‑skill, higher‑wage, more interesting roles. You can upskill people with the skills they’ll need for the future.

What we’ve developed here is a haptic feedback system that lets you control the robot. You can feel the difference between a tennis ball, a hard block, glass – and feel the weight too.

Charlie: Yeah, that’s really haptic, isn’t it? Am I above it there?

Louis: A little bit further down… There you go, you've got it.

This was initially developed for nuclear decommissioning, but there are many applications: bomb disposal, disaster relief, picking through rubble to find people who might be missing.

Louis: This is what we call our Speed 3D – a rapid, ruggedised metal 3D printer. It was created for a mining company in Australia. They have legacy parts in equipment located hundreds of miles from manufacturing facilities, so replacements can take weeks or months. This was developed to print metal parts on site and get equipment running quickly.

Here at the MTC, we also have the largest variety of laser research in the UK – lasers up to 50 kW that can weld and cut 30‑cm‑thick metal, all the way down to lasers that can make micron‑sized holes.

Advanced manufacturing is a huge growth area. Our links with academia and industry are crucial: making sure we have apprentices and people being upskilled in the technologies the country will need. Digital, AI, robotics – we bridge the gap between industry and academia. We’re actually the sixth largest provider of apprenticeships in the UK. There just aren’t enough big skills providers in manufacturing and engineering.

Charlie: I met apprentices today who were brilliant – 16, 17, 18‑year‑olds learning advanced technologies, but doing it practically. It feels like for the UK to lead in advanced manufacturing, it needs ten times – probably 100 times – what the MTC is doing today.

Louis: It does definitely.

Charlie: So, Martins, Rahma – it’s brilliant to meet two of the 5000 apprentices Lloyds is proud to sponsor.

Rahma: I started my apprenticeship at MTC Training. We mainly worked on manual turning, manual CNC and light fitting. Between my second and third year, I was still on block releases filling knowledge gaps. Now in my fourth year, I’m based purely in industry, working towards the end of my apprenticeship. I’m in the metrology lab – the science of measurement.

We use GOM, which is a big camera that takes lots of pictures of a part and turns it into a CAD model. We also use old‑school first‑principles equipment.

Charlie: I’ve heard people say “the line must not stop.” Is that why you learn engineering principles alongside advanced technologies?

Rahma: Starting with the basics was the foundation. When you go into real industry, you can see the change and development and the future of engineering and manufacturing.

There are huge skills shortages in the UK. 95% of UK manufacturing businesses are SMEs. It’s great to introduce automation and robotics, but unless SMEs have confidence that investing in kit, skills and people will drive improvement, it's hard for them.

They can come here, use the equipment, talk to engineers, reskill staff – it hugely de‑risks what they’re trying to do.

Martins: The first thing I looked at was how much practical work I’d do. University is lots of theory and no experience, so I chose an apprenticeship. The groups are small – everyone understands things better.

I made this turning, which is my favourite – a machinist’s jack, a little piece of brass with a thread inside.

Because we work with industry and real use cases, we have options afterwards to join industry or stay with the MTC.

Last week I attended a Women in Manufacturing event Lloyds Bank set up. I made a lot of connections and heard other people’s stories – it was a great experience.

I want to learn more about the new technologies coming into the MTC. Part of this is developing new IP and innovative technologies that scale in industry. Whatever we develop with customers, they can take away and use.

Our role is to give government and industry an idea of groundbreaking technologies that will make a difference in five to ten years. Using technology to its full potential is a huge benefit for the UK going forward.