Eastlight Community Homes is moving to 100 per cent keyless access for its 550 blocks by using Unloc’s app and digital locks.
Before its move to Unloc, problems with access management to its properties was costing Eastlight around £500,000 per year and 14,000 hours, including a no-access rate of 25 per cent and a four-day resolution time for each problem. Furthermore, the housing provider had been grappling with persistent access and communal compliance problems, including keys, fobs and key-safe boxes being used inconsistently over time and lacked a clear strategy for its access management.
Stephen Pettit, estate safety manager, Eastlight Community Homes, said, “We often had to drive for hours just to open doors for customers who had lost their key or forgotten their code.”
Eastlight’s goals were to streamline its access processes to cut the time and cost spent on access-related problems (including no-access incidents) and to enhance its compliance and building safety. The housing provider chose Unloc, a hardware-neutral software provider for digital access, to implement digital locks across its communal spaces.
The project began with 60 blocks, retrofitting an invisible Bluetooth module into communal entrance doors and installing an electronic key turner on some of its empty properties’ doors for ease of works access. This enabled doors to be opened via a mobile phone. Eastlight’s estate safety team also has access to Unloc’s administration platform so that the team can centrally manage and control access.
Taryn Paton, head of compliance and estates, Eastlight Community Homes, said, “As a product and an app, Unloc is safe, secure and effortless, plus it’s really easy to install. The business case is a no-brainer.”
With Unloc’s solution, access can now be granted in seconds for over 150 contractors and staff and no-access incidents have fallen to zero. Eastlight has made a 34 per cent annual saving from reduced hardware costs (keys, locks and fobs) and reduced its annual labour costs by over £300,000 due to less travel and fewer logistics-related problems.
Following the success of its pilot implementation, Eastlight now plans to go entirely keyless across all of its 550 apartment blocks within the next 12 months.
