Homes for Haringey to unlock £1M savings and improve housing services

Northgate Public Services rebranded to NEC Software Solutions on the 1st July 2021.

Homes for Haringey, who are responsible for managing 21,000 homes in North London, has selected NPS Housing to help transform housing services and unlock significant cost savings over the next seven years. The move will help free staff from routine tasks and instead deal with more complex casework. 

Staff at Homes for Haringey frequently deal with customers facing challenging situations, like those in danger of becoming homeless, or the elderly, both requiring face to face engagement. This has created a need for a housing management system that automatically manages the day to day administrative tasks for freeing up time for them to support customers where they need it most. 

Pete Davey, Head of IT at Homes for Haringey, said:

“We want our staff to be customer focussed.  NPS Housing will increase our efficiency so we can spend more time with tenants. You can’t overestimate the positive impact and the increased trust you gain when customers can see staff dealing with their issues in real-time.”

The new system will allow the organisation to measure staff workload and prioritise cases that need an urgent response. Homes for Haringey also have plans to use the technology to measure the social value of what they do too, by recording whether they have helped a tenant back into education, training or employment or preventing anti-social behaviour by running youth diversion activities. 

“A key requirement was to find a system that wouldn’t require a great deal of time to set up or require lots of training before our staff could use it,” continues Pete. “Many systems come with huge training overheads or massive training manuals staff don’t have time to read. The fact the NPS system is intuitive and not training intensive was a huge plus for us.”

Homes for Haringey are planning on using self-service modules within the software, so that those who wish to can apply for housing, pay rent or report repairs online, further liberating the frontline team.

Roger Birkinshaw, housing director at Northgate Public Services, said:

“Housing management goes beyond bricks and mortar, it’s about forming a complete picture of individuals and having a system in place which enables staff to have more time to spend helping the people they serve.  The only way to do this effectively is to release people from everyday tasks and give them back the time to offer premium support to their community.”

About Homes for Haringey

Homes for Haringey is an Arms’ Length Management Organisation (ALMO), set up in April 2006 to manage Haringey’s council housing. Homes for Haringey:

• manage around 16,000 tenanted and 4,500 leasehold properties and employ around 600 staff 
• have their own in-house repairs service (Haringey Repairs Service) which carries out around 60,000 repairs to council homes every year
• is responsible for the day-to-day management of council homes (which Haringey Council own and take overall responsibility for housing policy and strategy)