How Eastlight co-created a new community gateway during lockdown

Eastlight Community Homes is the newest housing association in the East of England.

Formed as the result of a merger between Colne Housing and Greenfields Community Housing – which took place on 1 July, during the first national lockdown – we are the largest community gateway in the country, which means resident influence is embedded in our organisation.

Between 2.10pm and 2.30pm on Wednesday 11 November, I'll be hosting one of the CIH Eastern Summit's 'lightning talks' along with Eastlight resident Michelle Baker. We'll be explaining how we've managed to break the mould in order to encourage the type of meaningful involvement that meets our customers' needs now and in future.

We will recall how, four months ahead of our merger was due to be approved, we were plunged into lockdown, and we wondered how we would continue with our plans.

Ultimately, it was the fact our organisations would be so much stronger together that drove us through those months – and led to us successfully co-creating a new 12,000-home trailblazing housing association for Essex and Suffolk.

Eastlight has 350 staff members, including an inhouse repairs service and an ambitious development team that is committed to delivering much-needed homes to people in the East of England.

During our talk on Wednesday, we'll be reflecting on how COVID-19 changed how our residents wanted to engage with us, and how we adapted our services accordingly.

In just 10 minutes, followed by a 10-minute question and answer session, we'll be discussing how we managed to work with our advisors to meet all of the legal requirements for the merger; how we carried out staff consultations mostly over the phone and via video call; and how we held a virtual launch event, with enough 'day one' energy to get everyone excited.

Crucially though, we'll also be explaining how we continued with a formal resident scrutiny process that was more in-depth than is usually the case when housing associations merge; and how we held a formal consultation with all residents, despite not being able to meet them face-to-face.

As a community gateway already, Greenfields’ shareholding residents were invited to endorse the name change, and we put a lot of effort into encouraging them to take part – from sharing videos about the naming and branding process, and contacting individuals via post, phone and email. This resulted in a great turn out for the vote, and a big thumbs up for our new name.

We believe that lockdown forced us to find new ways of communicating with our residents, which actually suit many individuals far better.

As a result of having made our merger happen in the middle of a global pandemic, we now know we have the ability to adapt to circumstances, focus on what we need to achieve and why, and make sure we deliver for our people.

We're very much looking forward to the Eastern Summit and ensuring our peers can also learn from our experiences.