The Organisation
Your Housing Group (YHG) looks after 28,000 homes across the North West, Yorkshire and the Midlands. The Group prides itself on providing homes which help people to live independently and on enabling people to get on and off the property ladder at different stages of their lives.
The group formed a repairs service, Fix360 in 2017 to independently maintain the Group’s properties across the North of England.
The Outcomes
YHG now have a clear understanding of Fix360 and have developed an improvement plan that has buy-in across the organisation. One of the most useful outcomes is the practical recommendations that Vantage made allowing Fix360 to really shape and focus the plan.
The analysis showed that Fix360 are providing great Value for Money and sit in the middle to upper quartile of the performance matrix. The next steps for the business are to build on the peer analysis review, shaping the roadmap to achieve their goals. Fix360 now understand the customer perspective, are clear on what process and procedure changes should be made and how to deliver on their plan to continue to drive performance.
The Benefit
“Vantage have a real depth of experience and practical understanding of the social housing sector and in particular Assets and Repairs. They provided practical recommendations that make a real difference. The review constructively challenged our way of working and brought increased clarity on the strengths and weaknesses of the service to develop a modern repairs service.
The challenge they provided was collaborative and friendly and their recommendations were structured and concise. They helped us to identify the priorities for customer service improvements and efficiency opportunities including productivity which helped us to set targets for the next phase of our improvement plan.”
Project In Detail
The Challenge
Fix360 needed to deliver responsive and emergency repairs and void property management. Fix360 had grown rapidly and there were differing views across the organisation on whether the service was on the right track. YHG needed to understand Fix360’s current position, strengths and weaknesses and whether the existing business plan was focused in the right areas to fully align Fix360 with YHG’s ambitions and service requirements.
The housing provider needed a responsive, professional, value-for-money repairs service that would bring existing skills and experience together with mobile technology to give customers a high quality and consistent service.
Our Solution: Service transformation
Vantage helped to re-set the perceptions of the repairs operation through engaging with key stakeholders to gain insight into their views. Vantage used perceptions surveys allowing YHG to understand in a structured way what stakeholders think of the repairs service. The methodology gets to the heart of perceptions and shows practically what needs to be addressed.
Vantage fully engaged with the operational teams to understand the existing challenges in delivering the services through a constraints survey. This objective and inclusive methodology provides a clear outcome highlighting the areas for improvement and ensures that staff feel they are part of the solution and the project is not being ‘done to them’.
Vantage undertook an assessment of operational performance and cost profiling of the service as well completing a maturity matrix. The whole process provided a snapshot on Fix360’s performance and a fresh starting point enabling the Group to jointly move forward and focus on the key areas for improvement.
Vantage provided independent assurance of the business and its performance and acted as a critical friend, offering support and insight to harness the organisations potential and focus on delivering the strategic goals.