We’re pleased to share our 2026 Residents’ Annual Report, which looks back at April 2025 to March 2026 and what we have been doing for you since.
The report is about what you told us, what we did in response, and what we plan to do next. It is written for residents, in plain English, and it is open about where we still have work to do.
Here are a few of the headline results from the year. You can find the full detail in the report itself:
▶️ 78% of residents are satisfied with our overall service, up from 77% last year.
▶️ 27 new affordable homes built for local people in Kent, Essex and Hampshire.
▶️ More than £1 million invested in existing homes, including 35 new kitchens, 27 new bathrooms and 25 homes with new windows and doors.
▶️ 33 homes made warmer through year one of our Warm Homes Project, with 59 more already identified for year two.
▶️ 100% of homes had all their required gas safety checks, fire risk assessments and asbestos checks.
▶️ Regulator ratings: we kept our G1 governance rating, our viability rating improved to V1, and we received our first consumer rating of C2.
Your feedback told us we needed to look after communal areas better and keep you better informed. Here is some of what we have done:
✅ Set aside £50,000 for communal areas in 2026/27, so big one-off jobs do not mean large rises in service charges.
✅ Held our first “meet the contractor” visit with residents, and we are now doing the same on other sites.
✅ Started trialling set response times, so you know when to expect a reply from us: we’ll acknowledge you within five working days and reply in full within ten.
✅ Created a simple complaints guide and made our anti-social behaviour information clearer.
✅ Re-tendered our repairs contracts and brought in new contractors in some areas to improve reliability.
On 16 July 2026, colleagues from across English Rural spent the day in our communities, meeting residents, visiting homes and seeing our developments first-hand. Further visits followed in September, and between them staff and Board Members have now visited over 400 homes. We are reviewing everything we heard and will share the key themes and what we will do next.
Thank you to every resident who stopped to talk to us, share a concern, tell us a story or simply say hello.
We know the cost of living is hard for many households. Our £10,000 Resident Support Fund is available again this year. If you are struggling, please talk to us early. Ask your Housing Manager or Customer Services.
In the coming year we will keep investing in communal areas and the Warm Homes Project, continue our development programme, share what we heard at the Big Door Knock, and improve communication for shared owners.
Would you like to help shape our services? You can join a focus group or our Resident Scrutiny Group, fill in our surveys, or simply talk to us when we visit. Every conversation helps.
You can contact us on 020 7820 7930 or at info@englishrural.org.uk. To report a repair, call 0800 121 4422. For emergency repairs out of hours, call 0800 046 9985.
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