Understanding our people and customers
This section shares a snapshot of the diversity within our organisation and the communities we serve. By looking at both colleague and customer data, we gain valuable insights into how inclusive and representative we are today - and where we have opportunities to improve.
In the London region, much of our colleague and customer base comes from legacy Octavia, where only a limited amount of data had previously been collected. As part of the merger in 2025, we inherited this small dataset and have been focused on building and improving it ever since.
To support this, we’ve held a number of data collection days across our offices throughout the year, encouraging colleagues to share their EDI information and helping them understand how it will be used to better support them.
Colleague headlines
We’ve improved the amount of EDI data we hold for our colleagues.
Colleague gender balance
Our workplace now has a 50/50 gender balance, after fluctuating between being more female- and male-dominated in previous years.
We hold less EDI data for our London region compared to colleagues who work in the South West, South or South East, but data collection is improving the fastest in London.
Colleagues, and customers, who live in London are more ethnically diverse than in our other regions, adding to the diversity of our colleague and customer base. We also know that there is more linguistic and religious diversity in the capital, emphasising the importance of being sensitive and responsive to the diverse needs of colleagues and customers.
We once again took part in the NHF’s EDI Data Tool exercise which compares the representation of housing associations’ boards and executive teams to their colleague bases as well as customers. We submitted our aggregated data to the NHF in April, with the overall results due to be published by the NHF in September. When these are published, we’ll look at how we compare against other housing associations who operate in similar geographical areas, to better understand how representative our Board and Exec are.
Senior leaders are broadly representative of the ethnic diversity of our colleagues, but there are no Black colleagues at Exec/Corporate Director level, while Asian colleagues are well-represented by both Exec/Directors and Heads of service.
Our colleague base remains considerably younger than our customer base, however our senior leaders are also more likely to be older, better representing the demographics of our customers.
The proportion of colleagues who disclose a disability or long-term health condition has slightly increased from 11% to 14%. Although London has less complete disability data for colleagues, among those whose disability is known, there were no regional differences in disability status.
*where disability has been disclosed
Consistent with last year, lesbian, gay, bisexual and colleagues from another sexual orientations are well-represented among our Exec and Directors as well as by Heads of Service, and we continue to build a Board that better reflects the diversity of our communities. While over 9 in 10 colleagues overall (where known) identify as heterosexual, this is in line with the customer profile.
The amount of EDI data we hold for our customers has fallen slightly compared to 24/25. This is in part due to our recent partnership with Octavia, for whom we hold less data. However, following an EDI collection day with London customers in summer 2025 we’ve significantly plugged the data gap, and we are exploring options for customers to be able to input and update their EDI details directly into the customer portal (MyAbri).