Overcoming challenges amidst new housing policy
As the new Labour government sets its manifesto into motion, the promise of “the biggest increase in social and affordable house building in a generation” rings around the industry. This will include changes to the Affordable Homes Programme, ensuring that it delivers more homes from existing funding and supporting councils and housing associations to build their capacity. But before we can properly consider the expansion of the affordable housing supply, we must first get on top of the challenges in front of us.
Pre-election legislation, such as the new consumer regulation standards, make it more important than ever to take strategic and innovative steps to improve tenant engagement. Voicescape Engage can equip you here, by automating outbound contact to encourage more meaningful inbound conversations with your community.
Meanwhile, housing associations across the UK are experiencing record levels of arrears debt. So how do we reduce this in a sector where it’s rising? Voicescape, through the integration of our Collections and Caseload Manager solutions, are helping housing associations do just that. Our live session at Housing 2024 welcomed three customers to the stage to share their success stories and best practices. Read all about it here.
Get in touch with our Sales Director Peter Hudson on 07375 428205 for a productive conversation about how these tools, in tandem with the rest of our product suite, can empower you to reduce arrears, increase tenant engagement and prepare for the future. You can also download our product brochure to learn more:
Social housing sector news
More funding for social and affordable housing is needed to meet Labour’s housing target, Angela Rayner has been told
In a letter signed by the National Housing Federation (NHF), the Chartered Institute of Housing (CIH) and the Local Government Association (LGA), the new housing secretary was urged to address “years of policy uncertainty and underfunding”. They say that, for Labour to build 1.5 million new homes this parliament, more funding for social and affordable housing is needed.
The RSH publishes a review of its consumer regulation work in 2023/24
The review covers the year up to when the new consumer regulation standards came into effect on 1st April, and comes with a warning to landlords from the Regulator of Social Housing (RSH) to “take their responsibilities seriously and provide safe and decent homes for their tenants”. Nine cases of breaches were found in the review, with health and safety requirements and effective tenant engagement among the areas for improvement. Discover how Voicescape can help you engage with your communities more effectively and reduce no-access rates to help maintain safe environments for your tenants.
Local authority insights
Largest UK public sector trial of four-day week sees huge benefits
Independent research into South Cambridgeshire District Council’s four-day week experiment has shown performance improvements in 11 out of 24 areas. It was found that the time taken to process changes to housing benefit and Council Tax benefit claims fell. Rent collection rates for council housing worsened slightly, but this was attributed to the cost-of-living crisis. Learn how Voicescape can help you save time and money by automating manual processes here – improving Council Tax collection rates and preventing future escalations.
Local authorities give five ways to boost long-term council housing supply
Twenty major local authorities have come together to recommend five ways that the government can secure a long-term provision of more council housing. The open letter warns that “England’s council housing system is broken and its future is in danger”. The five recommendations include:
Your Voicescape update
It’s been a busy month of webinars, podcasts and press activity here at Voicescape, as we continue to spark important conversations with the sector and use our product suite to empower its organisations to overcome challenges and better support their communities.
Most recently, it’s been our Caseload Manager capturing attention, as our award-winning product “has now been adopted by 22 registered social landlords (RSLs) across the UK, representing a 100% growth in customer numbers in the last year”, BBP Media report. Read more about it in their press release, along with how we helped Thirteen Group recover £800,000 in the first few weeks of implementation.
In other news…
PODCAST: Unlocking support and collaboration with Citizens Advice
The Voicescape Social Housing Podcast is back. Our host for Episode 27, Carly Harling (West), was joined by special guest James Woods, CEO of Citizens Advice Doncaster Borough. They explored the different levels of support that Citizens Advice offer, along with how housing associations can unlock this help and utilise collaboration to their benefit.
If you'd like to get involved with the UK's biggest social housing podcast, please get in touch.
WEBINAR: How Progress Housing use Voicescape Compliance to continuously improve customer engagement to reduce no-access
On 16th July, Nicola Brown was joined by Progress Housing's M&E Compliance Manager Graham Coleman as well as live attendees from across the UK. The topic of discussion was the many compliance challenges facing the sector – from the sheer volume of legislation to the cost of no-access and lack of tenant engagement. We broke down how our Voicescape Compliance solution is specifically geared towards helping you tackle and overcome these challenges – not solely to reduce no-access rates and the operational costs around this, but to also increase tenant engagement around all things appointment-related such as repairs backlogs and DMC check-ups.
Couldn’t attend the webinar? Watch the replay with all the key takeaways, including how Voicescape Compliance has “paid for itself” at Progress Housing in just a few months since going live.
Tackle the present, prepare for the future
The future's looking brighter for social housing, but meaningful change needs to be met with better on-the-ground approaches to reducing arrears debt, meeting the mass of new legislation at its fundamentals, and better engaging with communities to the benefit of both teams and tenants. Let’s work together with innovative technology as the tool to get ahead of challenges and employ more productive ways of working. Book a demo to find out how Voicescape can help.