Social Housing in the UK
In 2023, social housing providers in the UK face a myriad of challenges. They navigate an evolving landscape marked by new regulations, safety concerns, and decarbonisation targets. With the introduction of new tenant satisfaction measures in April, landlords must start collecting data on 22 tenant satisfaction measures in areas such as repairs and safety checks. The pace of this change is testing even the most digitally savvy housing providers. Furthermore, the recent amendment to the Social Housing (Regulation) Bill, known as “Awaab’s Law,” mandates landlords to address reported health hazards like dampness and mould within strict timeframes—adding another layer of responsibility to their operations.
Demand for affordable housing continues to outpace supply, and the sector is grappling with the need to increase building and fire safety, especially following the Grenfell Tower tragedy. Adding another layer to the complexity, the UK government has set ambitious decarbonisation targets for 2050, demanding substantial investment estimated at £104 billion.
Creating Balance…
Balancing these competing priorities is an unprecedented challenge for housing providers. The cost of maintenance alone is immense. In 2020-2021, the 207 English housing associations spent a total of £5.4bn on repairs and maintenance, with £2.3bn attributed to routine maintenance.
In this environment, housing providers must adapt and innovate to address these pressing issues and deliver safe, sustainable, affordable homes for their communities.
It’s no surprise that social housing providers are increasingly partnering with external providers to transform stock management services and streamline repairs. This is in a bid to keep operational costs low and deliver high-quality, tenant-focused services.
Amidst these evolving dynamics, Totalmobile has emerged as a critical player, empowering over 190 of the largest Housing Associations in the country to transform how they deliver services. By offering a comprehensive range of capabilities, Totalmobile enables providers to streamline the entire field service delivery process, resulting in improved visibility of work, informed decision-making, and accurate data capture. Ultimately, this leads to enhanced workforce productivity, guaranteed compliance, and the delivery of high-quality services that provide an exceptional tenant-focused experience.
Addressing Key Challenges in Social Housing
In the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire and the introduction of the Social Housing Bill, the sector faces heightened legislative pressures and a renewed focus on safety regulations. Moreover, the lingering impact of the pandemic has led to sluggish productivity and increased operational costs, prompting many organisations to outsource maintenance work. The challenges also extend to staff recruitment and retention, management of subcontractors, and ensuring visibility over the completion of work.
Totalmobile’s comprehensive solutions empower Housing Associations to tackle these challenges head-on by optimising responsive repairs, voids management, planned works, and asset management services. The platform ensures full compliance with health and safety requirements and provides a solid foundation for meeting stringent environmental targets, such as EPC targets by 2030 and Net Zero Carbon by 2050.
Comprehensive Solution for Field Service Delivery
Totalmobile’s innovative platform offers an array of features tailored to address the complex demands of the social housing sector, including:
- Job and asset management: Totalmobile enables housing providers to consolidate all property-related interactions into one platform shared across their operations. This centralises all maintenance activities and work orders, whether reactive or planned, tenant-initiated or landlord-driven. The seamless integration of front-office, field team, and back-office functions, including compliance and asset management, ensures that all vital information is centralised and easily accessible.
- Mobile working: Designed around the needs of the mobile worker, Totalmobile’s solution empowers field teams to capture intelligent data and access vital information on the go, ultimately enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery.
- Scheduling: With dynamic workforce scheduling, Totalmobile helps organisations better allocate resources to meet service demands, ensuring the most efficient distribution of staff to achieve complex scheduling goals. The platform’s adaptability allows for rapid response to required changes during the day, ensuring service delivery remains agile and responsive.
- Field Service Intelligence: Totalmobile’s comprehensive field service intelligence solution equips organisations with a complete understanding of past, present, and future service delivery. By providing in-depth access to real-time data, the platform grants housing providers unprecedented visibility into all aspects of service delivery. This ensures that critical information is available at the right time, empowering operations management to make effective decisions, enhance field service performance, and drive true operational value.
By harnessing the power of data analytics and performance metrics, Totalmobile helps organisations identify areas for improvement, optimise resource allocation, and continually refine their service delivery strategies to serve their tenants better. Our platform is addressing the critical challenges social housing providers are facing. It enables organisations to make data-driven decisions, optimise resource allocation, and deliver high-quality services to their tenants. Let’s look at this in more detail.
Enhancing Tenant Experience and Compliance
Our solutions enable providers to maintain compliance and improve tenant experiences in an increasingly regulated social housing environment. By mitigating the risk of escalated disrepair claims, including fines or quality of life matters, housing associations can deliver a higher standard of living to their tenants. Furthermore, Totalmobile’s platform enhances the visibility and management of contractors, streamlining communication and promoting accountability between all parties involved. These advancements contribute to an improved experience that places tenants at the heart of the social housing ecosystem.
Tenant Engagement and Communication
Enhancing tenant engagement and communication is vital for social housing providers. The Totalmobile platform offers a tenant portal facilitating seamless communication between tenants and housing providers. This enables tenants to report issues effortlessly and track the progress of repairs or maintenance work in real-time through transparent and easily understood communications. The pace at which repairs progress from initial report to final resolution is excellent, with full accountability at every step. This dramatically improves resident satisfaction and trust among our partner housing associations.
96%
improvement
in first-time fix rates following a successful deployment of our digital workforce management solution.
Integration with existing systems
One of the more exciting benefits of Totalmobile’s solutions is their ability to integrate seamlessly. This integration ability allows housing providers to use the capabilities noted earlier all through one platform. Organisations in this space can capitalise on the full potential of a fully integrated technology stack without overhauling their current infrastructure. This creates one single source of truth for the entire operation through one cost-effective deployment.
Training and support for staff
Our experts provide comprehensive training and support throughout the partnership. Ongoing training and support equip providers with the necessary skills and knowledge to deliver the best possible services using our platform. This helps housing providers maximise their investment in Totalmobile’s solutions and foster a culture of continuous improvement, ensuring their teams are well-equipped to tackle new challenges in the social housing landscape.
Collaboration and innovation
Totalmobile is committed to driving the social housing sector forward by fostering a culture of collaboration and innovation. Through sharing best practices, hosting industry events, and partnering with leading organisations, Totalmobile continually develops new solutions that address emerging challenges in the sector. By creating opportunities for housing providers to learn from each other’s experiences, exchange ideas, and collaborate on innovative projects, Totalmobile is helping to accelerate the adoption of new technologies and processes that enable social housing providers to tackle future challenges more effectively.
Building a Sustainable Future for Social Housing
As the UK moves towards a more sustainable future, Totalmobile’s solutions facilitate green practices and help housing associations meet environmental targets. Housing providers can invest in energy-efficient upgrades and sustainable initiatives by enabling a strategic shift in spending from reactive repairs to planned and retrofit projects. Additionally, Totalmobile’s platform supports more environmentally conscious processes for field workers and end users, such as remote assist capabilities that reduce unnecessary site visits and minimise carbon emissions.
Totalmobile’s Impact on the UK Housing Associations
Totalmobile’s credibility and market presence are a testament to the effectiveness of its solutions. With 20 of the top 50 housing associations as direct customers, Totalmobile’s housing solutions support services for over 1 million social homes in the UK, covering 42% of the market. Over 190 housing associations, including notable names such as Hyde Housing, Flagship Group, and Peabody Housing, rely on Totalmobile’s platform to improve service delivery and tenant experience.
By sharing success stories and highlighting the achievements of housing associations that have leveraged Totalmobile’s solutions, the social housing sector can learn from and build upon the best practices, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation.
