Case Study - Housing Ombudsman Service

Customer

The Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) provides a dispute resolution service to landlords and their tenants in England. Under the Housing Act 1996 all Registered Social Landlords (not local authorities) must become members of the Scheme while other landlords in the Private Rented Sector may apply to join voluntarily. There are currently over 2 million homes covered by the Scheme and 2400 landlords are members.

Business Issues

The Housing Ombudsman Service (HOS) receives large volumes of enquiries from members of the public either renting or seeking to rent property. It is important that communication with such contacts is handled promptly and efficiently- allowing staff to provide requested information or signposting to the relevant organisation.

The HOS also considers the rising number of complaints made by tenants, leaseholders, applicants for housing and others receiving services from a member landlord. It aims to address complaints quickly and effectively (often through mediation) and also seeks to promote a culture of learning from complaints and improving standards. Knowledge of the large volume of complaints about certain issues e.g. housing repairs, allows it to also focus its work on best-practice and prevention of further complaints.

A fundamental review of their core dispute resolution and communication processes established the need for a Casework Management system to support new streamlined processes at the HOS to cover ‘cases’ such as enquiries and complaints. The organisation aimed to decrease the elapsed time of case closures even further and to ensure that its functions are performed in an efficient and effective manner while promoting confidence in the independent processes it uses.

CAS Solution

HOS chose Workpro from CAS for its Casework Management system. CAS worked closely with HOS staff to provide customisation, implementation, training, as well as ongoing support services for the CAS developed Workpro application. PRINCE2 Project Methodology was key to the successful implementation, including regular user quality reviews to ensure all user needs were met, while data was successfully migrated from their existing IT system. The completed Workpro system is the core business application for HOS.

Benefits

The project successfully went live on the 1st July 2008 and benefits include:

  • CAS has extensive experience in implementing IT solutions to support rental of housing in the local authority sector throughout Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales. This allowed Workpro to be implemented quickly and cost-effectively while addressing all the key business issues.
  • The new business processes (reflected in Workpro), allow prompt and consistent communication with all those who make contact with HOS to ensure their needs are met.
  • Workpro allows HOS to capture, identify, analyse, cost, account for and target their work internally.
  • Users have an easy-to-use system which supports their business processes for handling enquiries and disputes efficiently and effectively.
  • Reports have been designed to provide the senior management team with all the tools and information they require to demonstrate performance against their Key Performance Indicators.

Martin Colwell, Head of Finance and IT comments. “CAS provided us with what we wanted in language that was easy to understand and showed much flexibility and understanding of our needs. We would wholly recommend CAS and its Workpro product.”