Capita Software Services signed a five-year contract in July 2009 to implement Capita Support at People 1st Slough, the ALMO which manages Slough Borough Council’s 7500 homes. This follows the joint decision of the ALMO and the council to replace their housing management systems with Capita Housing.
Capita Support enables housing providers to carry out assessment, matching, support planning, client outcome monitoring, referral and placement functions within accommodation-based and floating support services. The integration between Capita Support and Capita Housing is expected to enable better information sharing between the two organisations. Implementation is planned to start in September 2009, with the new systems expected to be operational by November 2009.
NCC Group is also working with Capita, Slough Borough Council and People 1st Slough on the IT improvement programme.
Andrew Billany, chief executive, People 1st Slough, said, “Our existing system was cumbersome and inflexible, and there were major deficiencies in the reporting capability that could only be corrected by a series of expensive upgrades and bespoke developments. Capita Support was therefore seen as a way to address the reporting issues and provide better all-round functionality for the supported housing team.”
Colchester Borough Homes also went live earlier this year with Capita Contractor to manage its housing repairs.
Colchester Borough Homes was created by Colchester Borough Council as an ALMO to manage the council’s 6000 properties. Colchester Borough Homes deals with around 40,000 calls from residents and completes more than 27,000 repairs each year.
Until 2008, Colchester Borough Homes previously partnered with an external company which was responsible for managing all housing repairs. These were logged in the contractor’s system which then had to interface with Capita’s Housing module to access current information on tenants and properties.
Often information about particular jobs did not reach field operatives because the data sharing was not working effectively. Also, because the system did not always update successfully, there was the possibility of repairs being ordered for properties which had recently been sold.
Paul Clarke, business development manager, Colchester Borough Council, explained, “The situation was not ideal. It was costly to maintain two databases and field operatives were simply not given enough information to do their jobs effectively. Ultimately it was affecting the service we were offering customers.”
Clarke added, “A review uncovered 44 ‘faults’ or areas for concern with the old software system that needed to be addressed. For example, to enter a repair took a total of 35 steps or key strokes. When you are dealing with 150 calls a day, this needlessly took up a huge amount of staff time. Combined with the data sharing problems, the situation was unacceptable.”
Capita Contractor was chosen, in part because Colchester Borough Homes was already using Capita Housing. Clarke said, “We now have a full picture about every resident and property. For every situation that we come across, we have access to all the information we need. The safety and effectiveness of our team has been much improved.”
The mistakes due to information not being passed between systems have now been eliminated as both Capita Housing and Capita Contractor use the same data so no interface is required. At the same time, the amount of time an operative takes to complete a repair entry has now fallen from 35 to just 12 key strokes, making it quicker to record repairs into the system.
