Selwood Housing was Highly Commended in the IT Team of the Year category at the Housing Technology Awards 2025. Perry Roche from Selwood Housing explains how a strategic overhaul modernised the organisation’s IT landscape and positioned it for long-term success.
The challenge
In mid-2023, our IT team faced mounting challenges from a high volume of support tickets, underperforming service providers, a lack of cloud expertise and an ageing IT infrastructure.
The team faced an overwhelming workload, with more than 500 support tickets raised each month (that’s the equivalent of 1.5 tickets for every member of Selwood Housing’s staff). The pressure was compounded by a backlog of over 20 essential IT projects, covering everything from essential upgrades and cyber-security enhancements to cost-saving cloud migrations. At the same time, our key managed service providers were underperforming, requiring frequent follow-ups and additional work from an already-overstretched internal team.
The lack of cloud expertise within our team posed a significant risk, particularly while we prepared to transition from on-premise infrastructure to Azure. Staff turnover further complicated matters, with long-serving employees departing without sufficient handovers or documentation, leading to knowledge gaps. Meanwhile, there was a recognition that training, self-service and general information about IT processes needed to be improved across the organisation.
Our team structure at the time exacerbated the problem. With no clear differentiation of roles, all team members were involved in managing support tickets, affecting both efficiency and morale. At an organisational level, our infrastructure was entirely on-premise, spread across two costly data centres, and supported by an external IT provider. Together, these factors made it clear that fundamental changes were needed.
The approach
The scale of the problem required a bold strategy. We decided to restructure the IT team, reduce our reliance on external providers and modernise our entire infrastructure.
This involved identifying the potential within our team and recruiting complementary skills to scale up to an internal team of eight, each with clearly-defined roles. Two first-line junior engineers would triage support tickets while three level-two I&O analysts and two level-three engineers would focus on higher-level support improvements, remediation projects and our all-important cloud migration. Our team would also need to rationalise over 200 applications.
Alongside the recruitment effort, we set out a plan to migrate our infrastructure to the cloud, partnering with a new Microsoft service provider to reduce costs and improve service quality. At the same time, we introduced structured ITIL-based processes to enhance efficiency and customer satisfaction. The road to implementation wasn’t without obstacles, particularly in recruiting the right talent, but after several months of persistent effort, we had a team capable of delivering real change.
Delivering real impact
Once in place, our newly-structured IT team embarked on a series of transformative projects. Strengthening our cyber security was a top priority, leading to the implementation of multi-factor authentication across the organisation as well as the replacement of our outdated VPN with a more secure SD-WAN solution.
Compliance improvements followed, including the deployment of new monitoring software to enhance our GDPR compliance. We then secured a new licensing agreement under the DTA21 pricing model, reducing our Microsoft costs by around £100,000 per year. This helped to not only save costs but also to embed our ‘cloud first’ Microsoft-based stance.
Recognising the need for a modern and efficient working environment, we overhauled our hardware estate. More than 240 outdated laptops were replaced with HP360 devices, with our refresh cycle reduced from five to three years to keep pace with technological advancements. Our transition to Windows 11 was accompanied by comprehensive staff training to ensure a smooth rollout. Our mobile infrastructure also received a significant upgrade, with staff provided with high quality Samsung devices and a switch to a new mobile network provider offering better coverage in the rural areas we serve.
At the infrastructure level, we made substantial progress in streamlining our IT environment. Our virtual machine footprint was reduced from over 100 servers to just 20, while 2.5TB of data, amounting to eight million files, was successfully migrated to Azure. By contracting with a new Microsoft partner for co-managed services, we achieved annual cost savings of around £300,000. To further strengthen our security, we introduced a 24/7 co-managed security operations centre, ensuring round-the-clock monitoring and rapid incident resolution.
One of our most significant process improvements was the introduction of ITIL-based procedures for support ticket management. This shift improved efficiency and helped drive end-users’ satisfaction to over 90 per cent, with SLA success rates reaching 94 pr cent. These refinements have transformed our IT team’s role from a reactive support function to a proactive enabler of business improvements.
Transformative results
Through these initiatives, our IT team has evolved into a respected and influential part of Selwood Housing. We’re no longer simply maintaining systems but actively helping to shape the organisation’s future, driving efficiencies and supporting wider business transformation.
Mark Mayler, Selwood Housing’s chief financial officer, said, “The work that the team has achieved over the past 18 months and continues to progress gives us a strong platform to meet the ever-increasing demands of the sector and to ensure the quality of our services to our customers.”
Perry Roche is the infrastructure and operations manager at Selwood Housing. The housing provider was Highly Commended in the IT Team of the Year category of the Housing Technology Awards 2025.
