Havering turns to Capita for social housing solution
The London Borough of Havering has hired Capita to help it improve its social housing services to residents. As part of the Council’s transformation, Capita’s software suite, OPENHousing, will be leveraged to provide a new web portal to log queries and make payments, as well enable Council employees to bundle together data on all of its housing projects into one central location. The five year deal is worth £380,000.
Havering London Borough Council covers the area of north east London with a population of 234,000. The local authority for the London Borough of Havering in Greater London, England, employs more than 4,000 people.
As part of its wider digitisation strategy, the Council is entering into a transformation programme aimed at boosting front-end and back-end systems that support social housing activities. By implementing new organisational processes and an underlying system, which builds on the benefits of digital, the local authority wants to improve the way in which it delivers services to it housing customers and increase the efficiency of the department. Key business case drivers include enhanced customer service delivery, more efficient management of housing stock, less unnecessary administration work, improved data management and reduced IT support costs, with the consolidation of multiple systems into a single channel.
The five year contract awarded to Capita, worth £380,000, will see the professional services firm support the Council’s transformation programme and provide the local government entity with its housing management software suite, OPENHousing. The OPENHousing software provides a streamlined means to improve citizen communication through self-service tools such as a new web portal to log queries and make payments. The system further bundles together data on all of its housing projects into one central location, improving efficiency and overall management of the council’s services. As part of the deal, Capita will also provide the Council with its mobile technology – which opens access to a dedicated mobile platform that works across devices. The platform allows employees more flexible working options such as remote working and the freedom of cross-departmental working.
Roger Birkinshaw, housing director at Capita Software Services, comments: “Capita’s experience in the housing market allows us to understand the complexities faced by councils. The OPENHousing software suite will enable us to improve the council’s service offering to its customers.”
Councillor Damian White, Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Housing, says: “We are pleased to announce our contract with Capita on the delivery of OPENHousing. This new software will help Havering Council deliver an integrated housing service, improve our record keeping regarding properties and deliver an improved service to our customers.”
Public services transformation
For Capita the latest deal adds to its long track record of projects in the public sector. At the start of the year the firm was for instance contracted to help the UK Government with improving public services in Scotland through the use of ‘design thinking’, and more recently the firm won a contract to deliver a command and control platform to the Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service and the South Wales Fire and Rescue Service in Wales. And just last month Capita IT Enterprise Services announced that it was appointed to Transport for London’s (TfL) new IT Solutions Framework.
