Sunderland City Council

Sunderland Council’s social housing application process is manual, inaccessible, generates failure demand, is labour intensive and it isn’t joined up with other social housing providers in the city. Advice and information is limited with no one source and there is no ability to currently advertise available properties on-line. Over 2,000 people are currently on the Council’s waiting list for social housing.

We want to work with other local authorities and providers to undertake user research to co-produce and deliver a customer centric and digitised platform that will;

• Validate and prioritise applications to match supply with demand
• Increase accessibility, join-up the application process, the advertising of properties and relevant advice to significantly improve the customer experience
• Reduce waiting times for customers
• Use data and insight to ensure a fit for purpose and lean solution
• Be secure by design, using common processes and building blocks and open standards
• Reduce failure demand and reduce the cost base for administering the Housing Allocation process

All aspects of the solution will be repeatable to be utilised across a wider range of customer processes. We will ensure that the user research, the process and the digital platform can be shared.