YOUR anonymous letter writer accuses me of living on the Planet Zog. I recognise he is unhappy and it would be good to talk to him if he would just give me a call.

In his letter he admits we have made significant efforts to sort out his issues. I can assure you we will continue to do so.

I did say in my last letter we have 155 precast concrete bungalows. These are difficult to maintain, but we have ploughed significant funding into updating these homes. Sometimes it is more effective to demolish and rebuild to modern efficiency standards. But this too is an expensive business.

Two Rivers was set up as a community organisation 10 years ago exactly because the council couldn't afford to maintain its' ageing housing stock without impacting on other public services. It takes considerable time, effort and resources to maintain, improve and grow the stock of affordable homes for local people. That mission is even more important than ever today as house prices have rocketed and wages have stagnated.

The organisation is run by an independent board of expert volunteers, expressly for the benefit of the community. It is a not for profit organisation. It charges rents below the market rate to help local people afford to live in the communities they love. It is investing in the local community and building new affordable homes for future generations. All these are facts.

In that decade we have spent £50m bringing all our homes up to the Government's decent homes standard, and that includes these bungalows. Many other housing associations, and even more private landlords, right across the UK, still haven't achieved this. Yes, there is always more to do, and we are doing our best to keep up the pace of change, despite the recession and funding challenges.

Now we are moving onto the next stage, assessing all our bungalows to determine their future. Give me or my colleagues a ring and we will tell you about our plans. We will be letting everyone know about what we are doing once the plans are finalised.

We agree that electric storage heaters are not the ideal heating system for the future, especially with heating costs rising so fast. But here in the Forest we have a higher proportion of isolated rural homes not connected to the gas mains system than almost any other housing association in England. That in itself causes significant problems and extra costs.

Last year we spent £389,000 on connecting 59 homes to mains gas and installing high efficiency gas heating systems. And we ran a pilot using new alternative energy saving technologies installing air source heat pumps into some of our homes.

We are also working with the Centre for Sustainable Energy on assessing the most effective alternative energy sources for all our homes. But technically and financially this is a major challenge in this deeply rural area.

Our rents are regulated by Government. We cannot and would not increase them arbitrarily as your correspondent claims. Government thinks our rents are too low, lower than other housing associations and the private sector, so our annual rent rises to try to bring them into line with the Government's target rent. We don't have any choice here.

Two Rivers gets all its funding from the rents it charges to its tenants, and all those rents go back into maintaining their homes. We have to balance our books to keep the reinvestment cycle going.

We do borrow money from the banks to build new homes (we have plans for 400 highly energy efficient new homes in the next few years), but this money has to be paid back too – from the rents we charge over the lifetime of these new homes. We may be a charity but the money has to come from somewhere.

We do work hard to serve the needs of our communities. Our customer satisfaction has grown year on year and now stands at 85 per cent.

If your correspondent feels he can get better value from a private traditional landlord we wish him well. But while he is with us we will continue to be courteous and polite and will always try our very best to help.

I know it's difficult, in this age of corrosive cynicism, to conceive of anyone having motives above self interest and profit. But let me reassure you that the Two Rivers team is absolutely dedicated to working for the community. It's a caring profession working for a housing association.

– Jon Coe, Two Rivers Housing.