Our Vision, Values and Strategic Goals

How We Work and What We’re Working Towards

Cornerstone is a well-regarded and financially strong housing association. As such, we plan to maximise these strengths to progress our purpose and vision.

Under the guidance of our board and our executive team, we have ambitious plans across the organisation for customer services, the quality and sustainability of our homes, and for future growth.

We work together to create places that people love to come home to. We achieve this by focusing on great places, great services, a great business and great people.

  • Great Places

    This includes all our work on safety, new building, improving existing homes, managing neighbourhoods, zero-carbon in homes.

  • Great Services

    This includes all customer services, our customer relationship and customer voice (great places and safe places are a co-production between Cornerstone and our residents).

  • Great Business

    This includes all elements of value-for-money and efficiency, financial and operational effectiveness, business resilience, zero-carbon in the workplace.

  • Great People

    This includes being a great place to work and the continuing development of all staff to reach their potential.

About Cornerstone Housing

We offer affordable, high-quality, rented and shared ownership homes across Exeter and the travel to work areas. Every year we build more homes to meet the growing need in our region. We currently have over 1450 properties.

At Cornerstone we understand the home is what makes everything else possible. By offering safe, stable, affordable homes, we open the door to health and wellbeing, work and education, family, friends and communities. Our purpose motivates us to create places that people love to come home to by focusing on great places, great services, a great business and great people.

We are financially strong and we are growing our development programme to deliver more new homes. Visit our strategies page to read our Big plans for 2025 to 2030, our greener ways strategies which covers our Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) plans for 2025 to 2030.

Working with Cornerstone and our Values

Working at Cornerstone involves interesting and varied work that makes a big difference to our residents. We create places that people love to come home to, and in the same way we are creating an open and supportive workplace and a team that people love to be a part of. At Cornerstone people can be themselves and feel at home, and can learn, grow and thrive.

Our Values

Our values are our ‘how’, the way we work. We deliberately haven’t set out the basic values that we would automatically expect in any organisation, such as honesty and integrity. Instead we are focusing on our distinctive cultural foundations that are individual to Cornerstone.

Our values are that: We are ambitious, we are responsible, we are positive, we are kind and we are connected.

These values provide the compass for all our behaviours within Cornerstone:

  • Ambitious

    This includes improvement, pace and speed, being creative, forward-thinking, alert to change, focusing on outcomes

  • Responsible

    This includes getting the basics right and doing them well, the key aspect of safety, managing our resources, avoiding waste, attention to detail, thinking about the implications of our actions

  • Positive

    We see the opportunities in situations, we are ‘glass half full’, we start with yes, we work with people to find solutions, we make people feel good about themselves

  • Kind

    We focus on people, we prioritise the needs of others, we are compassionate and courageous in decision-making, we challenge each other, we focus on wellbeing, respect for individuals, and deal with difficult issues sooner rather than later

  • Connected

    We recognise that diverse and inclusive participation best addresses complex challenges and opportunities. We look beyond our own resources. We actively build trusting, productive relationships with residents, colleagues, communities, and partner organisations in service of our mission. We seek to learn and share our learning.

Page last updated: 24th November 2025