Tag Archives: social housing

An open request to UK social housing providers

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If you work in social housing then I urge you to input into an update for Government. Feel free to pass this opportunity to a senior colleague if you feel they would be better placed to respond representing your organisation.

Our Digital Housing Report highlighted the critically low digital capability of the UK’s social housing sector, and inspired Grant Shapps to convene the digital housing summit. Mr. Shapps, myself, Grainia Long (CEO, CIH), David Orr (CEO, NHF), David Parsons (Chairman, Environment & Housing Programme Board, LGA) then wrote to housing association CEOs urging action.

Government has asked me to update on housing providers now embedding digital strategies and helping their residents to get online. To this end I would be extremely grateful if you would complete a very short questionnaire at http://bit.ly/MLFQblog before February the 10th, so I can represent your organisation’s thoughts and efforts.

Digital capability is core to every work stream. Residents with inadequate digital skills feel more isolated and socially excluded, are less employable, attain lower grades in education, and pay more for goods and services. Digital technologies also enable savings and improvements for your business (but only if your customers are switched on to using them).

I urge you to place the digital capability of your business and residents firmly on your Corporate Risk Register, and I thank you sincerely for taking the time to complete my survey.

If you are a UK social housing provider then please take a few minutes to follow this link: http://bit.ly/MLFQblog

With many thanks in advance for your help

Martha Lane Fox

November highlight report

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Race Online 2012′s monthly highlight reports are a round-up of all our tip-top campaign updates.

Read November’s report for the results of the brilliant Go ON Give an Hour campaign, the latest on Go ON Places, and details of our newest publication: Digital by Default 2012.

HomeSwap Direct offers yet more impetus to help social housing residents online

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Housing Minister Grant Shapps last week launched a scheme allowing digitally savvy social housing tenants to more easily swap homes.

HomeSwap Direct will be available exclusively online, consolidating currently fragmented information on fellow potential swappers into a smoother home-swapping process. UK social housing residents who can access the internet will enjoy greater mobility – freer pursuit of work and education, and fewer barriers to staying close to family, in a sector where just 5% of tenants currently move home each year (compared to 20% of private tenants).

But what of the estimated 4m social housing residents who are not online? How does HomeSwap Direct help their mobility? It’s undeniably a great idea and exactly the sort of thing the web is best at (cost-effective, dynamic, rapid, large scale, iterative and widely accessible services) but means little if you’re not online.

There are already many reasons why low digital capability among the socially housed needs urgent attention (even the 10% of lowest income households can save £279 a year by paying bills and shopping online; you’re 25% more likely to find work with digital skills; once in work you’ll earn 10% more) but HomeSwap Direct gives yet more impetus for government and housing associations to help residents to access the internet.

Landlords should promote low-cost, high-quality PCs, from under £100, such as those in the Get Online At Home scheme, or use them to stock digital hubs for tenants to get online.

There is also a national network of ‘digital champions’ keen to share skills with offliners and point them to free training and support. Landlords can find these champions online or recruit them from within their organisation.

Race Online 2012 is also working with partners to develop specific solutions for the social housing sector, including looking at different types of connectivity, from individual broadband, wireless mesh Wi-Fi, prepayment options, and managed service and broadband costs linked into monthly rents.

Our casebook for a Digital By Default social housing sector is also out in November’s edition of Housing Technology magazine, supported by the National Housing Federation, Chartered Institute of Housing and Peabody, among others. Pre-order your copy of the casebook here.

Charity and Housing Sectors Need Leadership and Support to Get The Best From Digital Technologies

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The past year has seen Central Government really embrace ‘digital by default’, with the Department of Work and Pensions in the lead with the design of Universal Credit.

However, studies show that nobody is better placed to support socially excluded groups to both get online and then go on to gain the many benefits of web access than charities and social landlords – ‘trusted faces and trusted places’.

Neither sector will be able to play such a vital role while their digital capability remains so shockingly low, so we are making a concerted push for change here.

Both sectors need better leadership, educational programmes, rationalized tools and a compelling reason to act in a time of unprecedented funding cuts.

While this is our biggest challenge as a team we are delighted to have the support of the Office for Civil Society and their strategic partners, ACEVO, NCVO, BLF and Locality in this drive.

We believe there are ways we can make progress quickly by asking partners to use their channels to show charities why they should and how they can build their digital capability: driving our digital champions recruitment drive within their organizations so they can draw down low-cost kit and low or no-cost software tools from CTT and iT4Communities.

This Autumn we will step this work up a gear, with a structured session held jointly with the OCS in October, Martha Lane Fox addressing the NCVO, pushing for the development of better tools to support charities’ use of technology and a commissioned piece putting a number around the resources and funds squandered by charities failing to put technology at the heart of their services.

We are also compiling vital and much-needed data for the social housing sector to properly size the money it is currently wasting because it is yet to seize efficiency and productivity gains represented by channel-shift. Housing Technology magazine will run a stand-alone supplement featuring articles and data from this survey drawn some of the UK’s leading housing associations – due out in November, and which will be circulated to every UK housing association CEO.

Please contact annie@raceonline2012.org and ben@raceonline2012.org for more info.