Welcome to our Annual Report for Customers 2025/26

Firstly, if you’re thinking our Annual Report looks a little different this year, then you’d be correct! 

We worked closely with a group of involved residents to shape this report. We took their feedback on board, streamlining the information we share so it reflects what you want to know the most about. We’ve also summarised this webpage into a shorter booklet and created a highlights video celebrating this year’s achievements, making it even easier for you to find out everything you want to know.

Our highlights booklet and video will be launching very soon!

So, what did we get up to between 1 April 2025 and 31 March 2026?

It’s been a busy but positive year for Eastlight. We launched Your Eastlight Team – a place-based way of working with a dedicated Neighbourhood Lead overseeing each of our 32 neighbourhoods - and our brand-new My Eastlight portal, making it easier for you to access services, manage your tenancy and get support when you need it.

We also strengthened the role you play in shaping Eastlight through the introduction of the Resident Members Charter. The Charter gives you more opportunities to share feedback, influence decisions and help improve the services that matter most to you. It also makes it easier for you to stay informed and have your voices heard.

Following a regulatory inspection in 2025, we retained our G1 (Governance) and V1 (Viability) ratings, confirming we are well-led and financially strong.

What’s so good about receiving a G1 and V1 rating? These are the highest governance and viability ratings available and gives you the reassurance you need to know Eastlight is effectively managed, makes sound decisions and has the financial strength to maintain homes, improve services and invest in the future.

More recently, in July 2026, we were pleased to receive a C1 (Consumer) rating following extensive work with the Regulator. This included strengthening our repairs performance and reporting more clearly and regularly to our Board and Committees, while maintaining other high-quality services – so you continue to get the support you need, when you need it.

Why is a C1 a good thing? Having a C1 rating confirms that Eastlight is meeting the regulator’s expectations for providing safe, high-quality homes and services. It also recognises the work we do to listen to you, involve you in decision-making and act on your feedback.

In fact, throughout 2025-26, around 1,500 residents took part in surveys to help us measure how satisfied you are with our homes and services. All 12 of our Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) have improved, with overall satisfaction increasing to 75.5%, up from 72.7% in 2024-25.

We also saw improvements with how satisfied you are with repairs and the time taken to complete them, our level of communication, and our contribution to your neighbourhoods. These results prove the changes we've made are having a positive impact and that we're making progress in the areas that matter most to you.

It’s also worth noting that Eastlight is performing strongly in the social housing sector. However, we know there’s more we can do to help you feel more satisfied with our services. By listening to your feedback, understanding our data, and looking at the Regulator’s annual TSM statistics across all registered landlords, we can better understand where we’re doing well and where we need to improve further.

Think Customer 

Supporting our work is our "Think Customer" approach, which helps to shape the way we make decisions every day. It encourages colleagues at all levels of the organisation to consider the impact on residents when designing services, developing policies and making decisions.

“Think Customer” reminds us to understand individual circumstances, listen to resident feedback and focus on what matters most to the people who live in our homes and communities. It helps us provide more responsive, personalised services and encourages colleagues to work together to find the right solutions for you.

You will see examples of how we “Think Customer” throughout this report. 

Need to contact us?

Use the My Eastlight portal to raise repairs, check your rent balance and make a payment, report anti-social behaviour, raise a compliment or a complaint, and change your details.

You can also speak to our Customer Services Team on 0330 128 0330. If our team can’t answer your question or request straight away, they’ll redirect it to your Neighbourhood Lead who will be in touch with you shortly.

We’re committed to making sure you have a real say in how our services are planned and delivered.

As a Community Gateway organisation, your voice helps shape how we operate. The insights you share influence decisions made by our Board and Customer Influence Committee (CIC), as well as the services we deliver every day. This helps you to hold us accountable and shape the decisions and actions that affect you most. 

In 2025/26, we introduced the Resident Members Charter, which was created in partnership with and approved by residents. The Charter replaces the old shareholding model with a simpler, more inclusive and easy-to-access approach to effective resident scrutiny and involvement.

Our Community Gateway Circle brings together all the ways you can share your views and make a positive difference. It includes formal groups such as:

• The Board: Two residents, including a Trainee Board Member, sit on our Board. Every three months, the Board meeting begins with a dedicated discussion about the most recent Customer Voice reports (view the reports here). This reinforces our Think Customer approach and ensures resident experiences shape decision-making from the outset. By bringing customer insight directly into Board discussions, we can focus on what matters most to residents and make better-informed decisions.
• Customer Influence Committee:  A group of 11 residents who work with the Board to support our strategic direction, performance and approach, while ensuring decisions that impact you are shaped by resident feedback and insight.
• Eastlight Resident Groups (ERGs): Resident-led groups that identify issues affecting their local neighbourhoods and communities, highlight local priorities, discuss potential solutions and work with Eastlight to agree actions and improvements.
• Active Residents Network (ARN): A consultation group that gives residents the opportunity to share their views on proposed changes, new initiatives, policies and services before decisions are made. Their feedback and insight help us ensure the decisions we make reflect your needs and priorities.
• Neighbourhood Voices (coming soon): Residents across our neighbourhoods who help us stay connected to local communities. They’ll share feedback, highlight local issues and help us understand what matters most to residents. They’ll also help us hear from residents who might not usually get involved or share their views with us.

As of 31 March 2026, there were 219 Resident Members and 169 residents in our Active Resident Network. The total number of residents actively involved increased by 57 compared to last year, demonstrating the positive impact of the Charter since it launched in September 2025.

During the year, we delivered around 24 bespoke Charter activities alongside a variety of neighbourhood and community events, whilst inviting our Active Residents Network to get involved with a further 25 opportunities. These covered service reviews, policy changes, sustainability strategy objectives and digital services like the My Eastlight portal.

In fact, the Active Residents Network have played a vital role in shaping Eastlight’s website. Members took part in consultations with our website provider, Prodo, to share what they liked about the website, identify areas for improvement, and tell us how we could make it easier for residents to find the information and services they need more quickly. This feedback directly influenced key design and functionality changes which ensure the website is more user-friendly, accessible and tailored to resident needs.

By March 2026, 35 of you were actively involved with our Eastlight Resident Groups (ERGs) which support local projects and community activities. These groups helped to install benches and planters across neighbourhoods, add picnic benches to shared spaces and provide funding to local community organisations. Joining an Eastlight Resident Group is one of the best ways to help improve your neighbourhood and make a difference in your community.

During the year, the Customer Influence Committee approved an improved scrutiny programme, which gives you the opportunity to play an even stronger role in holding Eastlight to account and improve specific services you rely on most.

All these activities help to make sure your feedback drives better services, keeps you informed about what changes have been made, and ensures you can see the impact your involvement makes. 

Click here to check out our current opportunities via the Resident Events Calendar

Click here to read more about scrutiny at Eastlight and how to get involved

When something goes wrong in your home, you want it fixed quickly and with minimal disruption. Our Home Solutions Team (repairs and maintenance) exists to make repairs easier, faster and more reliable for you.

During 2025-26, our repairs performance improved, with more repairs fixed on the first visit (87%) and scheduled repairs completed within an average of around 17 days, well within our 28-day target.

Overall, 84% of repairs were completed within our target timescales, with 99% of our 5,288 emergency repairs completed within 24 hours. Our repairs also included 4,235 urgent repairs (within seven calendar days); 18,757 routine repairs (within 28 calendar days); and 2,284 planned works (within 90 calendar days). Although demand increased in winter, we were able to maintain a stable service by moving teams and resources to where they were needed most.

Our Repairs Pledge, which was developed with residents in 2024, continues to shape the way we deliver repairs. It sets clear standards for response times, communication and service quality. You can find out more about the pledge here.

You’ve told us you wanted a more reliable repairs service, so we’ve invested in new technology, improved access to materials and focused on increasing first-time fixes.

In October 2025, we began working with Travis Perkins Managed Services to help our Home Solutions Team access materials more quickly in local hubs closer to where you live. This helps us complete repairs faster, while also supporting more sustainable sourcing and reducing our environmental impact.

We’ve also upgraded mobile systems used by our teams, introduced AI tools to help diagnose issues and improve first-time fixes, used drones to carry out surveys to reduce disruption and costs, and trialled new software to help identify problems more quickly and accurately. These improvements are helping us deliver a more reliable and efficient service that better meets your expectations.

No access

The average cost of a repair is £80.44, which has increased from £71 in 2024/25.

Missed appointments and visits where we're unable to get access to a home can have a big impact on our repairs service. Even when a repair can't go ahead, there are still costs involved, including travel time, staff time and administration.

Missing an appointment can also affect other residents. The time spent travelling to a property where we can't gain access could have been used to carry out another repair, which can mean longer waiting times for everyone.

We're continuing to work closely with our local repairs teams to make appointments as convenient as possible for residents. We aim to take your preferred appointment times into account and address any access issues in advance, helping us complete repairs efficiently and minimise delays.

If you need to cancel or rearrange your appointment, please contact us as early as possible so we can offer the appointment to another resident and help keep waiting times to a minimum. You can do this quickly and easily via My Eastlight portal.

To help you complete small DIY tasks, we’ve created some video guides on how to complete simple tasks in your home without needing to contact us.

Click here to watch our new repairs videos

Damp and mould 

Introduced in October 2025, Awaab’s Law helps make sure everyone has access to a safe and healthy home. The Law was named in memory of two-year-old Awaab Ishak, who tragically died due to mould in his social housing home in 2020, and is designed to prevent anything similar from ever happening again.

From November 2026, the next phase of Awaab's Law will expand these requirements to cover issues such as excessive cold or heat, fall hazards and fire safety risks. We’ll release more information about what our response timescales are and how we’ll support you in upcoming communications, guidance and advice.

During the year, we received 1,691 reports of damp and mould and successfully resolved 1,530 of these reports before 1 April 2026. 81 cases were still open as of this date, and a further 80 cases were cancelled and re-raised correctly after being identified as having been logged incorrectly.

Around 170 were classed as the most serious cases requiring immediate support, with the remaining cases requiring a lower level of intervention.

We responded to all high-priority cases within our target timescales and managed all other cases in line with our policy. In many cases, further repair work was needed to address the root cause of the problem.

Our Healthy Homes Team work quickly to investigate reports and support you. The team have introduced Aico home sensors in some properties to help us identify potential issues earlier. These sensors allow us to monitor conditions in homes over time, so we can take action sooner and help prevent problems from becoming more serious.

What do you think of our repairs service 

Our Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) results tell us that you’re more satisfied than ever with our repairs services since we made improvements based on your feedback.

You said you were more satisfied with your repairs service, rising to 80% from 77% last year, while satisfaction with the time taken to complete them improved significantly to 77.3%, up from 69.8%.

Our Customer Journey Surveys, which you receive after a repair visit, also tell us you’re more satisfied with our repairs service this year, with satisfaction increasing from 8.2 in 2024/25 to 8.4. You also rated our operatives highly for their professionalism (9.3), quality of work (8.9) and speed of service (8.9).

We’re pleased to see these scores improve which tells us you’re experiencing a better repairs service. Thank you to everyone who took the time to complete a Customer Journey survey, your feedback really does help to drive better services.

Between April 2025 and March 2026, we invested £13.2m in improving your homes and shared spaces. As a result, every Eastlight home meets the UK Government’s Decent Homes Standard.

This investment funded a wide range of improvements, including:

• 63 new bathrooms
• 88 new kitchens
• 675 heating system upgrades
• 79 roof replacements
• 135 new windows
• 469 new fire doors.

By managing contracts efficiently and using data to plan our work, we delivered 60% more improvements than originally planned, helping us drive down costs and achieve better value for money.

We also maintained high levels of building safety standards throughout the year, with an overall compliance rate of 99.7%. Our performance remained strong across all key safety areas, including gas safety, electrical inspections and fire risk assessments. Compliance for asbestos management, passenger lifts and water safety remained at 100% like last year.

A small number of checks were completed later than planned towards the end of the year, mainly due to difficulties accessing some homes, but these were closely monitored and accessed was later granted to complete these works.

Improving the energy efficiency of your homes remains a priority for us. During the year, we invested over £3m in energy improvements, including insulation upgrades and social panel installations in almost 300 homes.

We also accessed around grant funding to help us improve 70 homes, ensuring they achieved a minimum Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of C. By the end of the year, almost 79% of Eastlight homes had achieved a rating of EPC C or above.

This work was supported by £351,000 of external funding and partnerships such as SHIELD (Smart Heat and Intelligent Energy in Low-income Districts). These projects help us act quicker and test new ways to cut carbon emissions and reduce your energy costs.

In April 2025, Eastlight secured £1.2m from the Warm Homes Fund. We matched this to create a £2.4m investment programme that will run over three years. This funding is helping to improve around 275 homes through measures such as solar panels, air source heat pumps and better insulation, helping more homes reach EPC C by 2030.

We’ve also increased investment in our estates and communal areas, with a £2.6m improvement programme approved for the year. The programme was shaped by property information, resident feedback and input from colleagues. We’re expecting to spend upward of £3m each year, in future years, to continue improving your communities.

Improvements have already been completed at several locations, including Queens Road in Braintree and Parker Way, Green Court and Tweed Close in Halstead. These works included new flooring, upgraded entry systems, replacement windows and doors, and wider environmental improvements, like landscaping, upgraded bin stores and car park resurfacing.

At Queens Road, for example, tired communal areas were transformed into brighter, more modern and welcoming spaces, helping to improve both resident safety and pride in where they live. 

Residents were closely involved throughout the programme, with their feedback helping to shape both the design and delivery of the improvements. This has helped to build trust and increase satisfaction. 

Click here to see the transformation at Queens Road in Braintree

In December 2025, we launched Your Eastlight Team, a response to you telling us you wanted clearer ownership of issues and more local support.

Your Eastlight Team brings all your services together in one place, including repairs, tenancy support, estate management and community services. We created four regions, each with dedicated teams responsible for these areas so you can access quicker, more consistent support.

Overseen by our Chief Customer Officer, Dave Lockerman, and Heads of Housing, Tamara Valmas and Claire Morris, who joined us during the year, Your Eastlight Team also contains 32 Neighbourhood Leads and teams who work hard to respond to the biggest issues that matter to you.

Every resident has a dedicated Neighbourhood Lead (Housing Officer) that partners with other Eastlight teams, local organisations and external partners to provide you with day-to-day housing, tenancy and community support – so your concern or query is dealt with quickly and without unnecessary delay.

Your Eastlight Team also includes specialist teams who manage high level anti-social-behaviour, safeguarding, damp and mould, complex cases, complaints and lettings.

Over the next year, your Neighbourhood Leads will be spending more time in your local communities, hosting scheme visits where we’ll invite you to join us on our estate inspections, neighbourhood walkabouts and attending local events. These activities will give you more opportunities to meet your Neighbourhood Lead, raise any concerns, share feedback and talk to us about issues that matter to you and your area.

Click here to find out who your Neighbourhood Lead is and what support they can offer

Anti-social behaviour

During the year, our Intensive Housing Support Team responded to 1,443 reports of anti-social behaviour, resolving 1,092 cases across a range of categories like noise nuisance, fly tipping, drug use and verbal harassment. They also dealt with 583 safeguarding concerns, resolving 428 cases in the year while progressing new cases with relevant safeguarding services and support routes.

We know that anti-social behaviour can be complicated, and we may not always be able to achieve the outcome you're hoping for. While some issues can be difficult to resolve completely, we'll work with you to understand your concerns, explore possible solutions and help you access additional support where needed, including mediation services.

Over the past year, satisfaction with the way we handle anti-social behaviour increased from 58.4% to 61.1%. While we know there's still more to do and that this remains below the sector average, we're encouraged to see that satisfaction is improving and moving in the right direction.

Domestic abuse

During the year, the team received 230 reports of domestic abuse and resolved 144 cases. We understand that reporting abuse can be extremely difficult, whether it affects you directly or someone close to you. Our Intensive Housing Support Team is here to provide advice, support and guidance, and will talk you through the options available to help keep you safe.

We work closely with a range of specialist organisations, including Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk Police, domestic abuse charities such as COMPASS, The Next Chapter and Refuge, as well as mental health and NHS services. By working together, we can help make sure residents get the right support at the right time.

If you are experiencing domestic abuse, anti-social behaviour or hate crime, or if you're concerned about another Eastlight resident, please let us know.

You can contact us using the details on our Contact Us page here. Our head office in Braintree is also a Hate Crime Reporting Centre, where you can speak to someone confidentially in person, if you’d prefer.

Additional ways we supported you

Our Income Team completed 9,222 Universal Credit verifications, making sure residents could access the financial support they were entitled to. By helping verify claims quickly, the team reduced the risk of delayed rent payments, prevented residents falling into arrears, and provided payment plans and other advice so residents can stay in control of their finances.

Through our strong relationships with local authorities, community safety partnerships, police, domestic abuse services and more, we were able to support residents with 59 fuel vouchers, 69 household vouchers and 630 foodbank vouchers. We were also able to offer specific tenancy support, such as helping with hoarding, to 300 residents, alongside additional welfare support, like mental health and disability support, to 310 residents.

If you’re struggling or finding things hard to deal with, please speak to us. We can help you.

As the main point of contact for many of you, our Customer Services Team handled 109,310 calls – answered on average within 1 minute 33 seconds - and 31,842 emails during the year with a significant 91% of enquiries resolved on the spot when you first contacted us. These enquiries were mainly around repairs, tenancy queries and rent payments – demonstrating the strong skills and knowledge our teams have to support you first-time.

 Find out more via our Extra Support page here

Need to contact us?

Use the My Eastlight portal to raise repairs, check your rent balance and make a payment, report anti-social behaviour, raise a compliment or a complaint, and change your details.

You can also speak to our Customer Services Team on 0330 128 0330. If our team can’t answer your question or request straight away, they’ll redirect it to your Neighbourhood Lead who will be in touch with you shortly.

Your insights and experiences are vital, allowing us to understand your concerns and improve the services you rely on every day. However, from time-to-time we can fail to meet your expectations.

Customer Journey Surveys are sent to you after you use one of our services. This gives you the chance to share your experience with us. Whether it's letting us know what worked well or highlighting areas for improvement, your feedback is invaluable. This year, we received 2,764 completed surveys across our repairs, heating, lettings, anti-social behaviour and complaints services. We use your feedback to shape and improve our services, ensuring they better meet your needs.

When something hasn’t gone as expected, you can raise a complaint with us. We received more complaints this year, ranging from damp and mould and leaks, to repairs, heating or hot water problems. Most of your complaints were raised during the colder months, a time of year when demand for repairs and support naturally increases and services across the housing sector come under greater pressure.

We continued to handle most complaints within our target timescales. At Stage 1, 83% of complaints were successfully resolved, with 90% being concluded within 10 working days. These cases took an average of 10.2 days to close.

Only 17% of complaints were escalated to Stage 2, with 83% resolved within the 20-working-day target. While most complaints were completed on time, a small number of more complex cases took longer to resolve, which increased the overall time it took to get you the right solution.

During the year, 15 cases were referred to the Housing Ombudsman Service. The percentage of cases where the Ombudsman found a service failing with us has reduced significantly and is now below the sector average. We received no findings of severe service failures.

It’s important to note that these referrals do not always relate to complaints raised during the same year. Residents can take up to 12 months to refer a complaint to the Ombudsman, and investigations can take several months or more for the Ombudsman to complete.

Your satisfaction with complaints

We’re pleased to see more residents are satisfied with the way we handle complaints than last year. Satisfaction has increased to 41.9%, from 33.0% in 2024/25.

This result is above the sector median, showing the improvements we’ve made to our complaints service are making a positive difference. While we’re encouraged by this progress, we know there’s still more to do.

Through our Customer Journey Surveys, you told us that our Customer Experience Team were friendly and helpful when dealing with your complaint, giving us a score of 8.3 out of 10. You also said it was fairly easy to report a complaint (7.3), and rated the time it took to resolve it (6.1) and how well we kept you updated along the way (6.0).

We’ll continue to monitor the full customer journey and use the feedback you share through surveys to better understand your experiences. We’ve also increased resources within the Customer Experience team to manage higher demand and improve consistency.

We’ve also made several improvements throughout the year to strengthen the way we handle complaints. We carried out detailed reviews to better understand the reasons behind complaints, looked at good practice across the sector, including guidance from the Housing Ombudsman, and introduced a more structured approach to identifying and learning from issues.

Working alongside our Member Responsible for Complaints, Catherine Turner (Board Member and Chair of the CIC), and our Customer Influence Committee, we reviewed our complaints process and performance.

Most recently, in August 2026, we moved our Complaints service into our Housing Operations team so we can identify and resolve complaints quicker. This change aims to reduce the time it takes for us to analyse, respond and resolve your issues before you feel the need to escalate these further, when you may still be dissatisfied with our response. These improvements have strengthened both our oversight and day-to-day complaint handling, helping us deliver a better service and improve outcomes for you in the future.

Shared Ownership complaint handling

We also know that satisfaction with how we handle complaints for Shared Owners isn’t quite where we’d like it to be at 34.2%. This is, however, above the sector average and an increase on our result last year (23%).

We’re committed to working more closely with shared owners over the next year to better understand what they need from us to feel happier and safer in their homes and local communities.

If you’re a shared owner, we’ll soon be sharing more opportunities for you to get involved and have your say.

Compensation

If we get something wrong, we want to put it right. In some cases, this means offering compensation to residents when our service hasn't met the standard they should expect and saying sorry isn't enough. Compensation may help cover extra costs caused by our mistakes or recognise the inconvenience and disruption experienced.

For residents, compensation shows that we've listened, taken responsibility and recognised the impact of the issue. For Eastlight, it helps us learn from mistakes, improve our services and make sure we're delivering the best possible experience for residents. Every case is looked at individually to make sure any compensation offered is fair and reasonable.

Find out more about complaints here

Find out how we're listening and responding to your feedback here 

Read our Compensation Policy here

As a not-for-profit organisation, the rent you pay helps us provide safe, affordable homes and essential services for you and other Eastlight residents. It also allows us to invest in improving your homes, build new affordable homes and remain financially strong.

In April 2025, rents increased by 4.8%. Like many organisations, we've seen the cost of delivering services rise. Repairs, estate improvements, building safety, responding to emergencies and investing in communities all cost more than they did previously.

Your annual rent increase helps us continue providing these services while reinvesting in your homes and neighbourhoods, so you can feel proud of where you live.

How we spend every £1: 

• Managing your home like handling tenancy matters: 25p
• Maintaining existing homes including repairs: 19p
• Improving your homes through major works: 21p
• Paying interest on our loans: 23p
• Other costs for alarm services and aids & adaptations: 1p
•  Investing in your communities: 1p
• Surplus – recycled into building new homes: 10p.

Why do we have a “profit” as a not-for-profit organisation?

A surplus (or profit) is the money left over after all costs have been paid. As a not-for-profit, Eastlight does not pay profits to shareholders. Instead, any surplus is reinvested into improving existing homes, building new affordable homes, delivering better services, meeting financial commitments and maintaining reserves for future investment and unexpected costs.

Eastlight ended the year with a surplus of £14.1 million, which was higher than expected. This was mainly due to lower borrowing costs after we renegotiated some of our loans, as well as achieving savings by meeting environmental targets through funding deals with our lenders.

We also received more income from property sales, with some shared ownership residents buying larger shares in their homes, and some residents purchasing their homes outright through the Right to Buy and Right to Acquire schemes.

In 2026/27 we’re forecasting a total income of £123.7m, and we’re expecting to spend £110.2m to cover all essential housing services.

This leaves a £13.5m predicted surplus to further improve our financial stability and remain resilient for those unexpected, sudden instances where we need to spend more money on supporting you, your homes or communities.

Find out more about your rent and service charges here 

Find out more about finding a home here

There’s still a high demand for affordable housing across the East of England. In fact, there is currently more than 91,000 people on waiting lists for social housing in the East of England, which is why we’re committed to providing more high-quality, affordable homes for local people.

During the year, we completed 341 new homes, exceeding our target of 306. These included 234 affordable rent homes, 15 social rent homes and 92 for shared ownership – achievements that resulted in us being named in the Top 50 house builders in the UK by Inside Housing magazine.

Plus, in August 2026, we celebrated our 2,000th new home built since we formed Eastlight in 2020.

During 2025/26, we also helped more people take their first step into home ownership by selling 63 shared ownership homes.

Looking ahead, we have a strong pipeline of new developments with 470 homes already in contract and a further 470 planned for delivery. While our 277 new-home target for 2026/27 is lower than in previous years, our current progress suggests we could deliver around 310 homes.

Our focus continues to be on building homes that are well designed, energy efficient and built to a high standard. All Eastlight-led developments follow our Development Design Guide, which sets out clear standards for quality, construction and long-term management. This includes our Eastlight development at Whatfield Road in Elmsett which successfully delivered nine homes for social rent and nine for shared ownership, following around £1.6m in funding support from Homes England.

We’ve also created affordable homes through partnerships with private developers. For example, six social rent homes were provided at Chediston Street in Halesworth through a Section 106 agreement. This is when private developers transfer a proportion of homes to affordable housing providers like Eastlight.

Why isn’t Eastlight building more homes for social rent?

Many of our new affordable homes come through Section 106 agreements. These affordable homes consist of “affordable rent” (80% of market rent) and “social rent” (60% of market rent).

While Section 106 agreements help increase the number of affordable rent homes, they don’t always deliver as many social rent homes as we’d like as developers can usually generate more income from other types of housing such as selling homes. They do, however, create new, sustainable and mixed tenure communities where people from a range of backgrounds and experiences can live and thrive.

Where possible, we will always choose to lead developments ourselves. Schemes like Whatfield Road show the benefits of this approach, as it gives us greater control over the types of homes we build and allows us to secure funding to provide more genuinely affordable housing.

In addition, we’re exploring future regeneration opportunities and bidding for schemes like the Social & Affordable Homes Programme to help continue increasing the number of affordable homes available for the people and households that need them the most.

Empty homes

Improving how quickly we turn around empty homes is also an important part of meeting local housing need. By reducing delays, we can help more people move into a safe, comfortable home where they can settle and build their future.

During the year, 1,021 homes became available to let, including 251 new builds.

At the end of the year, we had 207 empty homes, including 28 that were ready to let, and we’re working hard to get these homes back into use as quickly as possible.

We know we need to improve how quickly we re-let homes and reduce the number of empty homes in our communities. We did not meet our re-let target this year. Homes took an average of 52 days to re-let against our target of 28 days. We know this means people waited longer than they should have for a home and we're taking action by expanding the Empty Homes Team in December 2025 and improving handovers between services.

We’ve also continued to reduce waiting times for garages. By increasing capacity within the team and building on improvements made last year, we successfully let 367 garages during the year.

The small number of garages that remained vacant were either ready to let or awaiting essential repairs and clearances before they could be reoccupied. Reducing vacancy levels ensures we make the most effective use of our assets, maximise income, and increase the resources available to reinvest in our homes, communities and services.

Overall, we continue to respond to the growing need for affordable housing by building new homes, maintaining a strong future pipeline and focusing on quality, sustainability and value for money.

Thank you for taking the time to read our Annual Report and learn more about the progress we've made together during 2025/26.

Everything we've achieved this year has been shaped by your feedback, involvement and support. Whether you've completed a survey, joined a resident group, attended an event, reported an issue, or simply shared your views with us, your voice helps us improve the services we provide and shapes the future of Eastlight.

We know there is still more to do, and we're committed to continuing to listen, learn and improve. Your feedback will remain at the heart of our decision-making as we work to provide safe, affordable homes and great services for everyone.

If you'd like to discuss anything you've read in this report, share your views, or find out more about getting involved, we'd love to hear from you. You can contact us through the My Eastlight portal, call our Customer Services Team, or speak to your Neighbourhood Lead when they're out and about in your community.

Together, we can continue to make Eastlight and our neighbourhoods great places to live.

Thank you for being part of Eastlight.