Currently there are around 2 million council homes in the UK, compared to 6 million in 1980. The Right to Buy scheme introduced in the Housing Act of 1980, which has now been abolished in both Scotland and Wales, is seen to be one of the key reasons behind this decrease. The government has promised “300,000 new homes a year by the mid-2020s” to help eliminate the approximately 1 million on housing waiting lists. But the social housing space is facing an enormous challenge.
Salford Professional Development’s 2021 Social Housing event was held virtually on the 12th May seeking to examine the status of contemporary social housing in the UK and what needs to be done in the future.
As well as sponsoring the event, Red Olive’s MD Jefferson Lynch was a speaker on the main stage and was joined by Director Of Analytics at The Hyde Group, Barry McNulty. You can watch their presentation here.
The Hyde Group is a social business that provides homes and services to 95,000 customers across London and the South East. Red Olive has worked with Barry and his team on a company-wide CEO dashboard that provides the insight needed to maintain and improve Hyde’s business. Hyde’s analytics aim is to harness data for social and economic benefit enabling the housing association to maximise its contribution to addressing the housing crisis. Barry and Jefferson discussed their work together and the challenges facing the social housing space, while exploring how data can be used to improve and address the housing crisis.
Representatives from Red Olive were on hand all day, helping to explain how understanding the data you hold can make business decisions and compliance reporting easier. It also showed how putting data at the heart of your organisation can give you a true picture of what is going in your association so you are better informed to meet the challenges of the future.
Jefferson Lynch, Managing Director of Red Olive says: “We are thrilled about sponsoring and being involved with this event and I am personally delighted that Barry agreed to join me on stage. Hyde is a great example of how using data can help modernise systems and culture to improve performance management.”
We have worked with several housing associations on data projects that have included visualisation techniques such as CEO and finance dashboards as well as doing some predictive work on late rent payments and actions. We had some great conversations with the housing associations who attended, sharing our knowledge of this space as well as getting some feedback on how we can assist in the future.”
Watch the presentation here.
