Page 36 - Housing Solutions Annual Report

We launched the Pascal Wellbeing
Targeted Areas of Improvement 2020/21
Rent Arrears
The continued increase of residents moving to
Universal Credit has presented challenges in
reaching our target rent arrears target. This has been
further exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic and
the unprecedented impact on our residents and
their income. This impact is evident in the significant
change to gross arrears from February 2020, at
2.71% to the March 2020 year end position of
2.88%.
Like all in the housing sector, our rent collection
continues to be affected by Covid-19 and the
economic and employment impact of this is
expected to remain throughout 2020/21 and
beyond.
We are committed to providing a focussed
approach to rent collection and assisting our
residents. We are therefore reshaping our housing
services; we are creating a new Income Team which
is directly linked to our Welfare & Support Team.
Both teams will work closely with residents who are
experiencing financial difficulties.
Voids
We set ourselves a target of keeping void rent loss
below 0.58% and re-lets to an average of 23 days in
for 2019/20, and we established a dedicated cross-
functional team to work together on this through the
year. Whilst we did not achieve this target, with rent
loss at 0.89% and an average of 26.2 days to re-let,
we experienced a number of voids from properties
where a long term tenancy ended and took the
opportunity to invest in extensive voids works on
these properties. The team however produced
excellent results in the last quarter of year, achieving
an average re-let time of just 14.3 days.
36 Annual Report and Accounts 2020
16645.02 HS Annual Report 86pp A4 v10.indd 36
16645.02 HS Annual Report 86pp A4 v10.indd 36
Tool across the organisation, providing
all our staff with personalised
recommendation and resources to
support their wellbeing.
As part of our employee engagement
and to bring everyone together we have
held a number of events throughout the
year, our GEM awards are particularly
popular, where we celebrate new
starters, birthdays and awards for going
the extra mile.
Covid-19 has impacted our ability to re-let
properties during the first quarter of 2020/21,
however the work that our teams have done during
2019/20 will be taken forward throughout rest of
2020/21 and we aim to see average re-let times
below 23 days for the last three quarters of 2020/21.
Procurement
Efficient procurement is a key component of
achieving value for money and recognising the
potential for additional efficiencies. Through a
number of large procurement projects, including
kitchens and bathrooms, windows and decorating,
we managed to achieve £217k of savings against
the £500k targeted. We have invested in obtaining
further staff expertise in procurement and will be
launching a new procurement strategy, policy and
processes across the business in 2020/21.
Procurement area Savings achieved
2019/20
Cyclical decorations £84,367
Kitchens & Bathrooms £61,208
Mobile phones £7,500
Lift maintenance £20,530
Technology enabled care £43,713
TOTAL £217,318
10/11/2020 13:35
10/11/2020 13:35