With a shiny new brand and refocused mission, Vico Homes wanted to use awards as part of a strategy to establish this new name in the housing development market.
Formerly social and affordable housing provider WDH, Vico Homes rebranded and expanded its remit in 2025. With a new strategy focused on growth in a wider geography, working with partners to provide more affordable homes for the people who need them, the comms team knew that building awareness of the brand was crucial.
We delivered our half-day awards training course in January 2026, to a room filled with communications colleagues and a few special invited guests from the projects and maintenance teams.
Adjusting the content to cover the housing sector was a simple change, but meant the course stayed relevant to Vico Homes throughout. With practical exercises embedded into the training, everyone left with a better developed idea of the right kinds of stories for their award entries, along with the quality of data they would need to support them.
In the four months since the training, Vico Homes has been shortlisted for 16 awards in the Northern Housing Awards, Women in Housing Awards, Housing Heroes Awards, ASCP and First Time Buyer Awards. On 21 May, they won twice at the Northern Housing Awards, taking home trophies for Team of the Year and Best Resident Support / Wellbeing Initiative, and are waiting on the outcome of 11 more.
Vico Homes head of brand and communication, Samantha Hagan, said: “We knew we wanted to upskill our team to give them more certainty about the right awards to enter and, critically, a way to confidently say no to the ones we shouldn’t be spending our time on.
“I’m blown away by the results. We’ve been on shortlists before but never had such a strong hit rate. The team is more confident in telling our story in the right way to bring home the wins!”
With the results due for the other awards in June, it’s likely to be a summer of celebration for the Vico Homes communications and marketing team.