Annual Review 2025/2026

As of March 2026, we added 478 new homes to the Group, completing 1,115 of the 2,324 affordable homes funded through our Strategic Partnership with Homes England. We’ve also started on site with every home that we will be building through our current Strategic Partnership, which means our contractual commitments are in hand and we will soon be adding many more completed homes to the Group.

Through reallocation of Modern Methods of Construction funding, we have been able to add a further three homes to our planned programme, which will bring us to completing a total of 2,327 funded homes by March 2028.

We have also been able to use our Strategic Partnership status to support other housing associations in the region to achieve their development ambitions. Working with believe housing, Livin, and Durham Aged Miners Housing Association, we’ve unlocked funding for the delivery of 188 homes across eight sites, enabling them to push forward with schemes that were otherwise paused due to funding limitations.

We’ve remained committed to the delivery of supported housing, both for older residents and residents with complex care needs.

We completed the redevelopment of Athol House in Ponteland, a modern, energy efficient scheme with 34 apartments for over 55s. 

And we started on site with our 124-apartment Extra Care scheme on Benton Road in South Shields, the second of the Extra Care schemes we’re delivering in partnership with South Tyneside Council

We’ve also made some investments in our market rent portfolio, dissolving our subsidiary Prince Bishop Homes and transferring the ownership of all 446 of our market rent homes to Karbon.

Paired with the development of a long-term strategy for this area of the organisation, this change will ensure more effective management and help maximise income, which in turn enables continued investment in both our homes and our services.

Ongoing investment in the quality, safety and energy efficiency of our existing homes has seen us spend £105.6m on planned and responsive programmes of work, delivered by a number of regional contractors.

And we began work on the next phase of our energy efficiency improvement programme, part funded by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s Warm Homes Social Housing Fund. This phase will see us invest close to £4.8m on improving over 450 lower performing homes over the next three years. Delivery so far has been focused in North Durham, and we’ll continue there throughout 26/27. Homes in West Northumberland will benefit from the programme in 27/28.

Overall, we exceeded our in-year target to get 81% of our homes to the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) rating of C by reaching 83.4%. This means we are well on our way to getting all our homes to the legislative target of EPC C by 2030.

We have consistently performed very strongly on building and customer safety measures, we are letting our homes more quickly than ever before and we’ve seen a significant reduction in rent arrears despite cost-of-living pressures on our customers.

We began the year undergoing our regulatory inspection from the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH), where we met the Consumer Standards with a rating of C2.  

We were pleased to see some of our key strengths recognised in that, including keeping homes safe, treating customers with fairness and respect, and clear and compliant complaints handling. However, it also highlighted areas for improvement, including the timescales of non-urgent repairs and our understanding of the diverse needs of our customers.

We’re committed to improving this and are continuing to invest in our non-urgent repairs service to meet the ever-increasing demand. We’re also continuing to enhance our understanding of the diverse needs of our customers through our ‘Getting to Know You’ project, set up to collect and update the information and data we need to be able to deliver tailored services to customers’ needs.

Awaab’s Law came into effect in October last year, requiring social landlords to address reported issues of damp and mould within strict timeframes.

To ensure we meet these requirements and deliver the best possible services to customers, we created a dedicated Damp and Mould Team, focused on tackling damp and mould issues quickly, thoroughly and with care.

Our customers’ voices matter and once again we brought customers together, this time for a day out to Beamish Museum. Over 200 customers joined us for the free day out, meeting many of our colleagues and chatting with us about a whole range of subjects.

We also launched our Digital Experience Network, a new online community where customers can help shape the future of our digital services. The network supported us with the testing and roll out of WhatsApp and a webchat function on our websites, providing alternative ways to connect with us without picking up the phone.

We have also worked with the network to redesign our customer portal, MyKarbon. The new platform not only has a fresh new look but also lots of functionality improvements, including simpler repair reporting, smarter appointment booking and a whole host of step-by-step guides to help customers DIY some simpler to solve issues.

Last year our Customer Net Promoter Score, which calculates how likely customers are to recommend Karbon to others, sat at a record high of +42. Scores above 0 are considered good and above +50 excellent.

We’ve continued our intensive work in our two Karbon impact areas, Byker and Stanley, helping strengthen local services, the economy and pride in place.

In Byker, with funding from Historic England, we began work to renovate two of the estate's hobby rooms, which are community spaces included in the original design of the estate to help bring residents together.

And in Stanley we worked with Durham County Council and Stanley Town Council to form the Stanley Front Street Partnership, supporting local businesses with shutter artwork on their shop fronts to enliven the High Street. We also worked with The Girls Network charity to provide girls at North Durham Academy with mentors to help them build confidence, develop new skills and think more positively about their future.

And we have progressed with the redevelopment of the Stanley Board School site, completing the demolition of the school building. We have begun exploring possible partnerships and potential funding streams to support with the site’s future redevelopment and are progressing plans for its future.

Across our wider geography, our community investment team has supported 187 community organisations and projects, with grants totalling over £451,000. They've also unlocked £5.7m of social value contributions from our suppliers and contractors to support our communities.

We have focused on supporting projects that help combat some of the biggest structural issues in the region, including tackling food and hygiene poverty. 

This includes the delivery of school holiday provision, supported by government-funded Fun and Food programmes. Last year, alongside our standard programme, we ran a series of activities in County Durham developed specifically for neurodivergent children and those with special educational needs and disabilities. Having received positive feedback from parents, we’re running the same programme again this year.

Our employment and skills service has continued to help customers maximise their potential, with 499 people accessing support from the team.

And through providing free, impartial advice and guidance, our financial wellbeing advisors have generated over £8.3m in income gains for customers. 2026 marks 20 years of us providing this services, which since it's launch has helped customers gain more than £60m in additional income.

Our work in our local communities saw us take home the trophy for the Community Impact Award at the prestigious North East BusinessIQ Awards 25/26.

With a focus on identifying processes across the business that can be automated with Microsoft Copilot and Power Automate solutions, a great example is the development of our service charge automation and management platform, SCAMP. This has transformed our management of service charges for nearly 10,000 homes, saving colleague hours of work, improving accuracy of data and providing a great customer experience.

We have continued to invest in providing the right environment for our colleagues and creating a supportive culture, and this is reflected in our employee Net Promoter Score which sits at +44. Scores above +40 are considered outstanding. 

This includes delivering a variety of inclusion and belonging initiatives for the benefit of both our colleagues and our customers. 

Our colleague inclusion hubs have grown from strength to strength and have been key to driving the success of several projects and strengthening our overall culture. To pledge our commitment to equality and support for LGBTQ+ customers, we became the first housing association in the North East to sign the HouseProud LGBTQ+ Housing Pledge.

As part of our commitment to colleague development and driving engaged high performance across the organisation, we’ve further developed our Aspire to Lead programme. Designed to develop future leaders within Karbon, since its launch in 2024 the programme has supported 57 participants, and around 33% of programme graduates have gone on to progress into leadership roles.

And in preparation for the Competency and Conduct Standard coming into place later this year, through the Social Housing Innovation Network North East (SHINE), we have helped pilot a new housing qualification, designed to raise professional standards in the sector and support senior colleagues keen to advance their careers. Three colleagues joined the first cohort of learners last year and have all graduated the programme with a Level 4 Certificate in Housing.

Our financial position remains strong. We started the year by increasing our loan book, agreeing £189m of new facilities to support our investment plans for delivering new homes and upgrading existing homes. We retained our G1 and V1 status from the Regulator of Social Housing and had our ‘A’ credit rating affirmed by Standard & Poor’s. S&P also affirmed our stable outlook, reflecting that our credit metrics will remain largely stable.