Housing Repairs (Beta)

Previous ‘Housing repairs online’ discovery receives £80,000 from the Local Digital Fund.

‘Housing repairs online’ discovery delivers project outputs, which are published on the Local Digital website.

MHCLG awards £100,000 to the ‘Developing a better online housing repairs system’ previous alpha from the Local Digital Fund.

Project team delivers agreed outputs from ‘Developing a better online housing repairs system’ alpha, published openly on the Local Digital website.

Project is selected to be funded as part of Local Digital Fund.

Project has an alignment workshop to align the team around:

• Any work already done
• Desired outcomes
• Who we need to speak to
• Our riskiest assumptions

Project publishes weeknotes about their workshop. 

Project has their 1st sprint:

• Drafts a survey for other councils to help
• Prepares discussion guides and consent forms
• Reviews service pattern and types of systems in use
• Has initial supplier conversations

Hosts 1st show and tell and publishes sprint notes

roject has their 2nd sprint:

• Interviews suppliers and council IT departments
• Identifies primary integration point for a product
• Looks at potential approaches to adopting a common API
• Reviews the Hackney ‘Raise a Repair’ codebase
• Hosts 2nd show and tell and publishes sprint notes

Hosts a supplier engagement session with TechUK

Project has their 3rd sprint:

• Interviews suppliers
• SoR code analysis
• Looks at communal and leaseholder repairs
• Looks into accessing a supplier sandbox environment

Hosts 3rd show and tell and publishes sprint notes

Project has their 4th and final sprint

The project receives £350,000 of follow-on funding from the Local Digital Fund to continue their work.

The project is undergoing procurement activities with the view of kicking off their beta stage in June 2021.

Having closed their supplier opportunity on the Digital Marketplace, the project is now busy shortlisting supplier proposals. Altogether, they received 14 applications from small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

The team is also preparing for the THiSTLe Housing IT Group Meeting presentation on 24 June and a roadmapping session on 28 June. At the roadmapping session, the project aims to:

• revisit the project vision for the project set at alpha stage
• agree a project vision for the beta stage
• agree a high level roadmap that shows how the beta vision can be achieved

Fraser Trickett from the City of Lincoln Council also presented at Digital Leaders Week, where he spoke about the project and their plans for Beta. Watch the project’s Digital Leaders week presentation recording on YouTube (skip to 32:10 minutes).

The team are continuing with procurement activities. Committed to making the application process valuable, the team have also worked on providing feedback to the unsuccessful suppliers.

The project presented at the THiSTLe Housing IT Group Meeting which had great engagement and excellent questions. A couple of councils even expressed an interest to follow the project and take part in it after attending.

On Monday 5 July, the project had a road-mapping session where they:

• revisited the project vision and agreed how they will update it
• agreed a project vision for the beta stage
• agreed beta stage goals that will help achieve the beta vision.

The Housing Repairs team has continued to further their knowledge of the DRS scheduling software, incorporating the ability to check appointment availability and book appointments.

The team has successfully integrated the Housing Management API with Universal Housing. Authentication has been added to both the Repairs API and Housing Management API ensuring that API requests are secure and authenticated.

The project team have held a series of user testing sessions to gather feedback from a diverse range of services users, including those who are digitally excluded, and to ensure that a range of accessibility needs were tested.

The team presented at Local Gov Camp 2021 and hosted a series of Show and Share sessions, every fortnight, to demonstrate the project’s progress. Previous sessions can be viewed via the Repairs Online YouTube channel.

During Sprint 9, the project has:

• set-up the completion of GOV.UK Notify so tenants and customer service agents can be contacted following a repair job being logged
• scheduled testing to make sure the tool is secure once it goes live
• added 13 different repair types for tenants to choose from. This will mean the repair request is accurate, and the right person is sent out to fix the issue e.g., ‘worktop, kitchen’ or ‘damp/mould, bathroom’

The team are delighted as more councils become interested in their tool. Over 4000 people are tracking their progress.

Newark and Sherwood councils joined the project as a partner.

This month the project also completed their tenth sprint and demonstrated their progress in a show and share session on 15 February.

The service now includes new iterations based on the last round of user testing. All the branches of repair identification are complete, with over 120 possible journeys leading to 63 different schedule of rate codes, covering the most reported non-emergency repairs.

The development team has also added the ability for the system to report issues detected across the API’s used, and potential server issues. These notifications will mean that the project team can closely monitor and resolve any issues detected.

On 4 February, the Housing Repairs project team had an interview with DLUHC for continuous funding. Their key objectives for the next proposed phase are to:

• create an API layer to integrate with housing management systems
• allow the option to amend or cancel a repair — importantly, without requiring a login
• provide the ability to log communal repairs
• offer valid repair options to leaseholders

This additional functionality will increase the options for reuse by other councils.

The project is awarded £350,000 in follow-on funding through the Continuous Funding Model.

The project will use the funding to support the live launch at Lincoln City, as well as onboarding another council to adopt the software.

The next phase of the project will focus on:

• developing appointment change and cancellation functionality
• developing the ability to order communal repairs
• developing the ability to order leaseholder eligible repairs
• making Schedule of Rates (SOR) codes configurable
• integration with a Housing Management System

On Tuesday 1 March, the project team held their Sprint 11 Show and Share session.

The team has made fantastic progress during this project and now have a working Minimum Viable Product (MVP) that integrates with the DRS scheduling system. The MVP is freely available, has utilised common components, and has been built and designed entirely on user feedback.

On Tuesday 8 March, Fraser Trickett presented at Public Sector Insight Week to provide an overview of how the team has progressed from discovery, to alpha and through to beta.

Fraser also outlined how the team has shared their lessons learnt from working with multiple councils and suppliers, and the importance of focusing on user needs.

As part of Digital Leaders Week 2022, Kristin McIntosh of Newark and Sherwood District Council will deliver a talk on ‘User-led design to deliver housing repairs online service’ on Monday 20 June.

The public beta phase of the project will start on Monday 16 May. During this phase, the project will focus on delivering:

• appointment amendment and cancellation functionality
• communal repairs ordering
• leaseholder eligible repair ordering
• integration with the housing management system

If you are part of a local authority team or an interested party and would like to find out more about contributing, collaborating and/or the project team’s approach, please get in touch.

City of Lincoln Council has become the first to use the open-source Housing Repairs Service — an achievement that’s been covered in an article by UK Authority. The repairs service has been promoted to Lincoln residents, and supplier MadeTech has agreed to publish a case study on the project.

The service was initially opened up to internal staff and has received good feedback from the customer service agents. Lincoln’s representative on the project has reported that staff have used the service to reduce their backlog of cases to around 700 from over 2,000!

Interest in the project is still increasing, and West Northamptonshire Council has started to attend the project’s agile ceremonies with a view to joining the project as a partner. The project team are actively engaging councils to find a replacement for Hounslow for the NEC Housing integration/ease of replication exercise.

The project team is collating a list of tech stacks for engaged councils, as part of their commitment to develop a strategy and action plan to engage local authorities. From this list, Jem Bowen from the Thistle IT Housing Group has identified which councils would potentially be in a good position to work with the project and adopt the service down the line.

The London Borough of Camden has advised that they may be in a position to collaborate on the NEC Housing integration, as they are already using NEC Housing as part of their Housing Repairs service. Camden may be able to provide insight and experience if they also involve members of their development team in the ease of replication activity.

The public beta of the Housing Repairs service has hit the ground running. In its first sprint good progress has been made, including:

• First prototype for Newark created
• Drafted the phase research plan based on research aims
• Scheduled and planned the first research days with Newark tenants
• Second prototype for Newark prepared for the research days
• Newark have made progress with the technical set up requirements for linking services

The work undertaken by the project team was demonstrated at the sprint 1 show and share session.

Parallel to this Lincoln’s service has now been live for over a month and the initial data collections show the service is being used by both residents and staff with minimal issues reported. 

Promotion of the service started in a controlled way from mid-May and will continue in this manner so the success of different promotion methods can be assessed as much as possible, thereby providing some guidance for future rollouts for other adoptees.

In the second sprint of the public beta, focus shifted a number of different areas which included:

• First user research sessions completed
• Insight analysis of first research sessions
• Updates to text in MVP
• Incorporate additional SOR’s
• Terraform tech spike
• Set up of service elements such as gov.notify for Newark & Sherwood
• System process investigations for Newark & Sherwood

The work undertaken by the project team was demonstrated at the sprint 2 show and share session.

It has been fantastic to hear how the service is helping tenants and staff at Lincoln; in 2 months they have reduced their pandemic backlog of appointments to book by 60%; the number of repairs booked online increased by 83% and the number of repairs booked online outside the 9am to 5pm period increased by 31%.

Key achievements during sprint 3 include:

• Updating the prototype
• Defined and workshopped the user journey for communal repairs
• Preparations for user research with Newark tenants
• Information gathering on leaseholder repair journeys
• Provisioned API infrastructure using Terraform
• Technical prep work with DRS

July marks four years since the launch of the Local Digital Declaration. Newark and Sherwood District Council signed up to the declaration in 2021 and in the sprint 3 show and share session they outlined how the declaration made it possible for them to get involved with the Housing Repairs Service project.

The sprint 4 show and share session focused on the second round of user research concerning the communal repair journey. 

The project team is still looking for another council to partner with them to support the ease of replication with another Housing Management System.If you are part of a local authority team or an interested party and would like to find out more about contributing, collaborating and/or the project team’s approach, please get in touch.

The sprint 5 show and share session focused on the Capita Housing Management System integration tech spike and the feedback from the first session of the 3rd round of user research.

The sprint 5 blog had a slightly different focus as the team posted answers to a number of common questions posed by interested authorities about the project, particularly on how councils can get involved.

On Tuesday 16 August, the project team held their Sprint 6 Show and Share session, which was well attended by a number of councils.

During the session, the team were pleased to confirm that the Housing Repairs Service prototype is now publicly available for interested councils. The prototype is password protected, so if you wish to obtain access to the prototype please contact the team.

The Housing Repairs Service project team is pleased to announce a partnership with NEC. During the current delivery phase, the development team will work with NEC to deliver integration with their NEC Housing system.

Following a meeting on Monday 12 September with NEC and the London Borough of Newham, NEC agreed to provide the Housing Repairs Service project team with access to their API documentation and their sandbox environment. The project team and NEC also agreed that the API sequence should create a job prior to getting appointment availability.

On Tuesday 13 September, the project team’s Sprint 8 show and share session took place. The session was well attended with representatives from Bromley, Newham, Nottingham, Southwark and the Swan Housing Group present.

On 27 September, the team hosted their Sprint 9 show and share session. This session featured discussions about improvements to enable the passing of descriptive information through to the DRS scheduling system, along with changes to allow standardised configuration to aid deployment of council information, such as phone numbers and service hours.

Leon Ackie (Collaboration Manager at Local Digital) has contacted the respective project leads from Lincoln, Newark and Sherwood, Hackney and Redbridge, the four councils using or installing the Housing Repairs Service, to schedule a collaborative workshop. The aim is to discuss a potential continuous funding application, the service’s development roadmap, and the business model to proceed with, as well as much more!

The workshop is likely to take place in the second week of October, with representatives from each council in attendance.

In the final week of October, the project team was joined by Tom Harrison from Redbridge Council, who shared why they have chosen to implement the Housing Repairs Service and the different set up they have to manage integration with the scheduling system (MCM) for their repairs contractor, Mears.

On Tuesday 1 November, The Housing Repairs Service held a collaborative workshop with representatives from Lincoln, Newark and Sherwood, Hackney, Redbridge, Camden and Calderdale. During the workshop, councils discussed the services development roadmap, a desire to submit a continuous funding application, the governance structure that will be used to manage the codebase, the business and support model options for the service.

The project team held their Sprint 12 Show and Share session on Tuesday 8 November, sharing insights from their recent governance workshop and demonstrated a communal repairs journey.

The Housing Repairs Service project team held a meeting with NEC on Thursday 17 November to discuss integration with the NEC Housing Management System. Together they agreed actions for the next sprint and hope to make significant progress with the integration.