With the intense demand for UK housing, the challenge facing the Government to deliver its strategy for increasing the provision of housing has never been greater. Latest assessments conclude that as a result of reservations on new homes falling by up to 50 per cent compared with last year, 20,000 of the 45,000 flats and…
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Contributed Articles
Making shared services work
Elmbridge Housing Trust and Richmond upon Thames Churches Housing Trust, operating as Paragon Community Housing Group, have benefited significantly from implementing a shared services approach to IT, including an estimated joint saving of £330,000 per year. Of course, as with any partnership, there are challenges, for example, cultural differences and the decision about which ICT…
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Coping with anti-social behaviour
The range of responsibilities of social housing providers for handling and managing neighbourhood issues has broadened considerably in recent years. In particular, the focus on anti-social behaviour highlights how the relationship between landlord and tenant is changing; there is an ongoing pressure to remove barriers between departments and to provide ‘joined up’ services. Service providers…
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The integration game
One of the biggest issues that 62 social housing respondents in our customer service survey said they faced in 2008 was managing the integration of new software with existing business systems. Indeed, they have every right to be worried. Organisations are under increasing pressure to update their IT systems in order to meet their operational…
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Has IT lost the business battle?
For years the IT department fought for the chance to demonstrate the business value of technology innovation. Yet after a flurry of CIO appointments in the late 1990s, housing associations appear to have largely changed their view about technology as a business enabler and could therefore be in danger of considering it as little more…
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Is your PC really necessary?
Centralised applications and thin desktops are helping many housing associations deliver IT services that are lower coat, more secure and easier to manage. But even within these organisations, there are always users who claim to need a full-fat ‘real PC’. But do they? Thin computing may have been around for 10 years, but it is…
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