Wychavon District Council in
Worcestershire has cut the average time taken to make housing
applications and has increased the number of requests made online
after implementing a system to simplify the process.
For the Wychavon Home Choice system, the project team cut the
number of housing policies used by the council from eight to one.
In the past, the number of policies had confused some of the people
who applied for homes.
Because members of the public failed to understand the system,
council officers often found themselves spending a long time
explaining their housing decisions.
When the council used eight policies, people spent an average of
20 minutes completing an application for a new home. That fell to
four minutes after the system based on a single housing policy went
live.
The council said, "The project implementation was almost
certainly the smoothest IT project Wychavon has delivered."
This was in part because the project team had set clear measures
for success before starting work on the system.
From a usability perspective, people applying for social housing
had to confirm that the system provided a good service, not just a
better service. In addition, the seven housing associations that
manage social housing on behalf of Wychavon had to buy-in to the
system.
The project team also wanted financial benefits. It needed the
number of vacant properties to fall and for newly vacant properties
to be filled more quickly.
Since going live, the housing associations have reported
improved income because their properties are empty for less
time.
A key requirement of the council was for most of the
applications for homes to switch from post and telephone to the
internet. This was realised with 80% of applications using Wychavon
Home Choice being made online.
The project team was made up of people from the IT and housing
departments as part of the council's efforts to ensure the
technology could deliver the business process.
The council looked at a relatively large number of IT
applications for Wychavon Home Choice. "There was little
comparative experience to draw on as few councils had implemented
choice-based lettings systems," the council explained.
The council and the housing associations unanimously chose a
hosted service from a Abritas, which included two applications: a
housing register and the choice-based lettings application.
http://wychavon.whub.org.uk/home/wdc-housing-homechoice.htm
www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1155499
http://wychavon.whub.org.uk/home/wdc-housing-homechoice.htm
http://www.communities.gov.uk/index.asp?id=1155499
http://www.choicemoves.org.uk/pp/gold/viewgold.asp?id=941
Tony Collins' IT projects blog
Against the
current: exploring the challenges of complex IT projects
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