Sheila Espin explains how Birmingham’s Housing Transformation Programme is improving services in the city
At a time when local government faces an uncertain financial future as public debt continues to mount, there is enormous pressure on councils to cut budgets but still deliver improved levels of public service.
In Birmingham, the council has had to face an enormous challenge, given the numbers of people needing assistance and the size of the organisation.
The credit crunch means we have more people than ever needing social housing, while there is a national shortage of housing stock and less available resource to deliver the services our customers desperately need.
Sales of council land are finite and yielding less revenue, so we need to be inventive to finding ways of improving service delivery at the same time as cutting costs.
As part of the council’s overall determination to remodel our services through the Business Transformation Programme, our aim since 2006 has been to deliver a more efficient and customer-focused housing service which meets the three-star criteria set out by the Audit Commission, and delivers real improvements for our customers where it really affects them – in their homes.
Whatever the size of any organisation, there is one crucial element that any change and improvement programme needs to consider – how to involve its staff and enthuse them from the very start to share the journey and have a personal investment in the success of the transformation.
We chose to empower every division in the housing service through our Housing Transformation Programme, to draw up and take ownership of a ‘three-star improvement plan’ to show what changes were needed and how they would be made.
These individual plans were then overseen by a ‘three star chamber’ composed of senior management team members who would both mentor and challenge, with monthly updates for each plan presented by the relevant manager.
So, instead of imposing a corporate vision from above, the individual divisions which, of course, have the most direct experience of their specialist areas, were encouraged to think for themselves, moderated and guided by senior management in the Housing Transformation Programme.
Some of the key innovations which have come out of this work include:
l the value for money matrix is a tool which helps calculate whether a service is providing value for money. The process involves asking customers for feedback, investigating costs and comparing them with the costs and customer satisfaction from other local authorities and housing
l the Roadmap tool monitors the progress of our housing transformation projects to provide clarity across the breadth of our transformation work. We knew that having a number of projects running concurrently needed an understanding of the interdependence between them
l partnerships are another key tool – the ‘City Housing Partnership’ – with housing associations, private sector and Homes and Communities agency, etc – has been valuable and a landlords’ forum has been set up to work in partnership with private landlords to help them provide good-quality homes and services to some of Birmingham most vulnerable residents.
By working in partnership we have been able to licence many of the city’s houses in multiple occupation with approved private landlords working to best practice.
Our award-winning home options service, run in partnership with neighbourhood offices and specialist agencies, such as St Basils, has enabled us to take a more proactive approach to tackling homelessness in the city.
Since 1998, our pioneering work to tackle rough sleeping has reduced rough sleepers from 56 to four. Our success has been the result of strong partnerships with a range of statutory and voluntary organisations
l customer interaction _ the tenants’ performance monitoring group is a group of tenants who each review our performance every month against our key performance indicators.
They have the ability to issue ‘improvement notices’ if they are not satisfied with our performance.
We promised our customers in 2006 that we would work to deliver them a three-star service. By 2010, our programme to bring all council homes up to the Decent Homes Standard will be 100% complete.
There has been a real culture change in the directorate.
The Business Transformation Programme has reinforced our feeling of self-belief. It is a complete change to how staff felt five years ago, when we was a ‘no star’ directorate.
There is a definite can-do attitude and the achievements staff have made over the last four years has given them a thirst for improvements which deliver better services for our customers.
Sheila Espin writing on behalf of Birmingham City Council Housing and Constituencies Core SMT
In Birmingham, the council has had to face an enormous challenge, given the numbers of people needing assistance and the size of the organisation.
The credit crunch means we have more people than ever needing social housing, while there is a national shortage of housing stock and less available resource to deliver the services our customers desperately need.
Sales of council land are finite and yielding less revenue, so we need to be inventive to finding ways of improving service delivery at the same time as cutting costs.
As part of the council’s overall determination to remodel our services through the Business Transformation Programme, our aim since 2006 has been to deliver a more efficient and customer-focused housing service which meets the three-star criteria set out by the Audit Commission, and delivers real improvements for our customers where it really affects them – in their homes.
Whatever the size of any organisation, there is one crucial element that any change and improvement programme needs to consider – how to involve its staff and enthuse them from the very start to share the journey and have a personal investment in the success of the transformation.
We chose to empower every division in the housing service through our Housing Transformation Programme, to draw up and take ownership of a ‘three-star improvement plan’ to show what changes were needed and how they would be made.
These individual plans were then overseen by a ‘three star chamber’ composed of senior management team members who would both mentor and challenge, with monthly updates for each plan presented by the relevant manager.
So, instead of imposing a corporate vision from above, the individual divisions which, of course, have the most direct experience of their specialist areas, were encouraged to think for themselves, moderated and guided by senior management in the Housing Transformation Programme.
Some of the key innovations which have come out of this work include:
l the value for money matrix is a tool which helps calculate whether a service is providing value for money. The process involves asking customers for feedback, investigating costs and comparing them with the costs and customer satisfaction from other local authorities and housing
l the Roadmap tool monitors the progress of our housing transformation projects to provide clarity across the breadth of our transformation work. We knew that having a number of projects running concurrently needed an understanding of the interdependence between them
l partnerships are another key tool – the ‘City Housing Partnership’ – with housing associations, private sector and Homes and Communities agency, etc – has been valuable and a landlords’ forum has been set up to work in partnership with private landlords to help them provide good-quality homes and services to some of Birmingham most vulnerable residents.
By working in partnership we have been able to licence many of the city’s houses in multiple occupation with approved private landlords working to best practice.
Our award-winning home options service, run in partnership with neighbourhood offices and specialist agencies, such as St Basils, has enabled us to take a more proactive approach to tackling homelessness in the city.
Since 1998, our pioneering work to tackle rough sleeping has reduced rough sleepers from 56 to four. Our success has been the result of strong partnerships with a range of statutory and voluntary organisations
l customer interaction _ the tenants’ performance monitoring group is a group of tenants who each review our performance every month against our key performance indicators.
They have the ability to issue ‘improvement notices’ if they are not satisfied with our performance.
We promised our customers in 2006 that we would work to deliver them a three-star service. By 2010, our programme to bring all council homes up to the Decent Homes Standard will be 100% complete.
There has been a real culture change in the directorate.
The Business Transformation Programme has reinforced our feeling of self-belief. It is a complete change to how staff felt five years ago, when we was a ‘no star’ directorate.
There is a definite can-do attitude and the achievements staff have made over the last four years has given them a thirst for improvements which deliver better services for our customers.
Sheila Espin writing on behalf of Birmingham City Council Housing and Constituencies Core SMT
