Housing

The drive to bring 95% of social housing up to central government’s Decent Homes Standard by 2010 has created major challenges for local authorities. Faced with this problem, which strategy should they pursue? Should they transfer stock to a housing association, create an Arm’s Length Management Association (ALMO), or go for Private Finance Initiative funding?   An ALMO might look like the right choice, but can it achieve the two-star rating needed to unlock government funds? 

Blueprint's consultants are working with our local authority customers to help them analyse these complex issues and plan a route forward.  Our management information systems have for years provided housing directorates, Registered Social Landlords and ALMOs with the tools they need to manage rent collection, arrears, repairs and maintenance and organisation-wide financial planning. Increasingly, we are being asked to assist with the challenge of managing anti-social behaviour and building sustainable communities.

Blueprints information systems help with strategic planning issues and day-to-day tasks, such as the management of repairs.  For example, our systems can show you whether your in-house repairs team or contractor is providing a timely and efficient service.  And if there are persistent problems with quality, you can pinpoint the cause – whether it’s poor call handling, the initial briefing process, the performance of a particular contractor, or even an individual in one area who’s letting the team down.

Among the issues we are working on with our social housing sector customers are the following:

1. Rent collection: ‘I want to monitor the rent collection process throughout the borough using maps: can that be done? We want to know which members of our rent collection team are observing our policies, which are not, and if not why not.’
2. Arrears escalation: ‘What are the leading indicators of a potential rent arrears problem?  With 60% of our tenants in arrears and just 50 collection staff, how should we target our resources?’
3. Responsive repairs: ’We want a dashboard that will help us to compare the performance of our contractors in each part of the borough. We opened a call centre to speed up repairs but it doesn’t seem to be working: how can we find out what’s wrong?’
4. Planned maintenance: ‘I need a system that helps me to set priorities for maintenance and re-calibrate them if budgets are cut. We tend to get lost in the detail: we really need a system of alerts that will pop up and remind us what’s urgent.’
5. Complaints and anti-social behaviour: ‘We would like to link every complaint we receive, from whatever source, so we can target hot spots and identify individuals who cause the greatest problems for our communities.’  
6. Sustainable communities: ‘We collect a lot of information about changing demographics and patterns of need, but when it comes to planning, we find it difficult to bring all our information together so that we can analyse it and set priorities’. 
7. Development: ‘I want to model future cash flows from the different housing options we are considering, so that we can perform ‘what if’ scenarios and make better informed decisions.’ 

Interested to know more? Contact Gordon Martin on 020 7832 1826 or email gmartin@bpms.co.uk