The latest news from us

We use your feedback to identify where your services are working well – and where improvements are needed. Your views, including the 12,000 responses to our regular feedback surveys last year, help us constantly review our services to make sure they meet your needs and offer value for money. See page 8 for an update on how your feedback has helped improve your repairs service.

From this month, you may also be contacted by an organisation called TLF Research to complete a survey about our services.

This survey is part of the Regulator of Social Housing’s Tenant Satisfaction Measures, which all housing providers are now using to measure customer satisfaction.

You’ll be asked whether you’re satisfied with everything from the services you receive to the way we communicate with you. Surveys will be carried out over the phone or online and shouldn’t take longer than 10 minutes.

We’d really value your opinion and you will be able to see how we are performing on our website

From communal garden make-overs to rubbish-filled skips, our teams have been out and about in a community near you.

Community tidy-ups, landscaping improvements and vegetation clear-ups have taken place everywhere from Greenstead Green to St Osyth.

 Highlights include working alongside residents in Tiptree for a mass tidy of one estate, and filling 10 skips and five vans with unwanted items and rubbish with Templars Community Association and other residents in Witham.

As well as clean-ups, we’ve carried out landscaping improvements in eight areas, from Groves Close in Colchester to Lancaster Way in Braintree. These include creating block paving, renovating raised bedding and general enhancements.

Thank you to everyone who has joined our teams and pitched in with the tidy-ups. If your neighbourhood feels a little neglected, please contact us to see how we can help.

More affordable homes will be available for some of the 2,460 Braintree district households on the waiting list after we secured permission to build on a site in Bocking.

The 70 homes – a mix of social rent, affordable rent and shared Bocking homes boost Our star residents ownership – will be built in Bovingdon Road, Bocking.

Development Director, Andrew Hull, said: “All the new homes will be affordable and provide much-needed housing for some of the thousands of residents and families who are waiting for a home in the Braintree District.”

Eastlight is looking forward to opening the doors to our first ever show home this summer at the Mount Hill development in Halstead. The Eastlight-led project is underway, with 71 affordable homes currently under construction as part of our commitment to tackling the housing crisis, one brick at a time. S

We’ve joined a new project to investigate the potential of using 
technology to reduce your heating bills and our carbon footprint.
SHIELD (Smart Heat and Intelligent Energy in Low-income 
Districts) is a partnership of organisations which wants to pilot 
established and new energy technologies in some Eastlight homes 
to reduce energy costs and carbon emissions.

Thank you to the 400 residents who completed a recent survey 
about your heating bills and experiences

Catherine Turner and Rue Garande have beaten competition from across the UK to be shortlisted for the Women in Housing and Housing Heroes Awards.

Accessibility champion Catherine, who is blind and a wheelchair user, speaks up on behalf of disabled residents to ensure Eastlight’s services are inclusive, and she has been shortlisted for Board Member of the Year.

Rue, an Eastlight resident and Community Empowerment Officer, campaigns on behalf of domestic abuse survivors and has created the All In Alliances for Colchester and Halstead.

She has been shortlisted for Tenant of the Year. Catherine and Rue will discover if they win at a ceremony in late June. Good luck!