The last few years have been tough for Crawley Borough Council’s housing department, culminating in a “poor zero star rating” by the Audit Commission last year, but a concerted effort all round has seen the organisation come together to transform itself and deliver improved services and make a difference both for itself and for its tenants

Naturally, it’s been hard work, but a team effort has helped to ease the hardships of transformation. Teamwork has fostered a cultural shift in the organisation that has oiled the wheels of change, as it were. This has applied as much within the housing department, as within the wider council corporate structure, which rallied round to provide ongoing support as housing services moved forward out of the doldrums. Working with tenants and leaseholders was yet another strong component in the transformation of housing services.

It has come a long way since its nadir in June last year, when the Audit Commission recorded its poor zero star rating. But, even though that rating also came with “uncertain prospects for improvements”, Bernadette Fry, the commission’s inspector, added
a not unhopeful caveat, commenting: “However, there is a new focus on cultural change and experienced senior staff have been appointed,” she said. “This is providing a platform for improvement, which is beginning to result in better performance management
and service planning.”

Since then, Crawley has not left Fry’s words to ring hollow, but ensured the promise inherent in the words is fulfilled in real delivery. Significant progress has been made, and the council has already put systems in place to improve its services to meet its tenants’ expectations.

The department has worked with consultancy Vanguard to conduct the ‘systems thinking’ approach to take a long hard look at its organisational processes and culture - to completely transform the organisation. “A staff survey, ‘Culture Change - staff accepting the need for change’, identified the type of culture that existed - avoidance, oppositional - apparently the hardest to address as we were cheerfully informed,” said Karen Dodds, head of Crawley Homes.

“Systems thinking strips out a huge amount of waste, and lots of other things that get built around council bureaucracy, so, it strips out everything that adds no value and focuses on the purpose of the delivery of service to the customer - all of the value adding steps.”

The result is a streamlining of service by hacking out all the dead wood - it also helps to clear away the process clutter that might otherwise hinder the proper focus on efficient and quality service provision.

Dodds added: “The biggest benefit is in our customer service. Our tenants and leaseholders are receiving a much better service than we formerly provided, and it’s reduced our costs as well.”

Among the organisation’s leaps forward, it has completed the procurement of its Decent Homes contractors, selecting Wates Living Space and the Apollo Group, and it has embarked on a £30 million four year programme of works.

Meanwhile, a new gas servicing contractor, eps, has been appointed, and the council is in the process of procuring contractors for its improved responsive repairs and voids work processes. The tenancy management and payment system has also been radically overhauled and improved, offering greater options to tenants to pay their rents, and so stay out of arrears.

Concerted efforts to listen to tenants and involve them in service delivery are reaping the rewards of improvements too. The procurement of the contractors saw tenant representatives involved in the entire process, but also more generally, the council has worked hard to bring in as many views as possible - so that feedback isn’t dominated by the most active tenants. It is a way of obtaining the deepest and broadest picture possible.

“When we did the income collection intervention, we listened to about 5,500 different demands of the service to actually analyse that service and properly align it to what people wanted to see,” Dodds said. “And we will continue to do that so that it isn’t about a small minority of people who are involved - it’s about talking to everybody.”

That sounds like quite a tall order, but in practice, it involved staff seizing the moment to make note of people’s views during the every day business of the housing department - while on the phone to people, or during every day interaction with service users. In this way, it gleaned a deeper understanding of its tenants’ views.

While there may be a long way yet for the organisation to go along the road to recovery, it seems to have made a strong start - it has rediscovered its way and is determined to stay on course.