Government crest Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities

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Laying the foundations for better local public services

Housing Repairs (Technical Alpha)

Contents:

  1. Project outputs
  2. Project timeline

The project led by Lincoln City Council builds on previously completed discovery and alpha work. The project has a strong focus on engaging the private sector, and aims to prove the need and feasibility for a common online repair reporting tool.

Working with South Kesteven Council, the London Borough of Southwark and The Royal Borough of Greenwich the project explores housing management systems in use across local government with a view to understanding how the current repairs service works in the back office.

The project aims to explore:

  • Potential scope of a Beta phase
  • Understanding the user journey
  • Prioritise repair types
  • Supplier engagement
  • Understand existing systems and possible integrations
  • Costs of any potential solution
  • Cross-council engagement
  • Capability and capacity within councils
Repairs systems map
Repairs systems map

The project followed Agile delivery principles, incorporating user research and service design into its activities. Working in the open, the project hosted fortnightly show and tells to update on progress and share findings. You can find the show and tell recordings and sprint notes on the project website.

Project outputs

Downloads

Alternative ways to view the outputs:

Contact [email protected] if you are having problems accessing the outputs.

Project details

Phase: Alpha

Funding granted: £50,000

Duration: March - October 2020

Partners: Lincoln City Council, South Kesteven Council, the London Borough of Southwark, the Royal Borough of Greenwich

Project links

Related projects:

Project timeline

December 2018 - discovery

Previous ‘Housing repairs online’ discovery receives £80,000 from the Local Digital Fund.

April 2019 - discovery

‘Housing repairs online’ discovery delivers project outputs, which are published on the Local Digital website.

September 2019 - alpha

MHCLG awards £100,000 to the ‘Developing a better online housing repairs system’ previous alpha from the Local Digital Fund.

February 2020 - alpha

Project team delivers agreed outputs from ‘Developing a better online housing repairs system’ alpha, published openly on the Local Digital website.

March 2020 - technical alpha

Project is selected to be funded as part of Local Digital Fund.

April to July 2020 - technical alpha

  • The project receives £50,000 funding
  • Setting up the team and collecting resources
  • Undertaking procurement activities

August 2020 - technical alpha

Project has an alignment workshop to align the team around:

  • Any work already done
  • Desired outcomes
  • Who we need to speak to
  • Our riskiest assumptions

Project publishes weeknotes about their workshop. 

 

Project has their 1st sprint:

Hosts 1st show and tell and publishes sprint notes

September 2020

Project has their 2nd sprint:

  • Interviews suppliers and council IT departments
  • Identifies primary integration point for a product
  • Looks at potential approaches to adopting a common API
  • Reviews the Hackney ‘Raise a Repair’ codebase
  • Hosts 2nd show and tell and publishes sprint notes

 

Hosts a supplier engagement session with TechUK

 

Project has their 3rd sprint:

  • Interviews suppliers
  • SoR code analysis
  • Looks at communal and leaseholder repairs
  • Looks into accessing a supplier sandbox environment

Hosts 3rd show and tell and publishes sprint notes

October 2020

Project has their 4th and final sprint

February 2021

The project receives £350,000 of follow-on funding from the Local Digital Fund to continue their work. For the next stage of work, the project proposes 3 phases to:

  1. Build the user interface with a single scheduling supplier at one council, using a subset of repair types based on the common service pattern defined within Alpha.
  2. Prove that the tool can easily be replicated, with deployment at Southwark Council and another authority, using an appointment scheduling system where possible.
  3. Develop a common API that will integrate with alternative scheduling suppliers, and consider future development to housing management systems using a common API layer.