Choice-based letting (CBL) is an updated version of the old points-based system for the management and allocation of social housing, and it invites greater participation from people eligible for social housing. This in turn means that local authorities and housing associations need to manage their housing stock more efficiently and also add more properties to their stock, sometimes by working in partnership with private landlords.
Furthermore, CBL gives tenants more choice about where they want to live and, because they have been involved in the property selection process, encourages them to stay in a property for longer.
However, the accessibility of the application process can be problematic for housing providers. They are obliged advertise properties by different means including online, print media and in their offices, and tenants must be able to apply for properties by whatever means they choose. This might be in person, online, by phone, or by writing a letter. Providing the infrastructure needed for this and managing the resulting requests can be very costly and time-consuming.
The majority of housing providers advertise properties on their own websites and use housing management systems which often include a web-based interface for advertising the properties. However, by advertising properties only via the internet, housing providers are alienating a large proportion of their residents where internet penetration is low.
In urban areas, there are campaigns to make the internet more publicly available. For example, Greenwich Council has access points in its libraries and council offices, but it found that the vast majority of applicants can only get to the access points at lunchtime; time is limited and there are often queues. Equally, providing rural areas with public internet access is difficult, albeit for different reasons usually due to geographic spread.
Increasingly housing providers are turning to a telephony-based IVR (interactive voice response) system to overcome these issues and to complement existing channels, making the CBL process as inclusive as possible.
Both Greenwich Council and Scottish Borders Council have added an automated phone-bidding element to their web-based CBL system. At any time of day, callers can now call an advertised number from their mobile phone or landline and follow a set of simple instructions. Callers are asked to provide information, such as their social housing reference number and the property reference number, using their phone’s keypad. The telephone number for the service can be controlled by the housing provider, making sure that calls are either free or at a competitive rate.
The system is designed to elicit exactly the right information so that applicants are told if they are eligible for their chosen property before the end of the call (for example, a single male would not be eligible for a four-bedroom house), which represents a huge speeding up of the application process.
Housing officers can also see the results of web bids and phone bids in real time and can start allocating properties (depending on their own predefined criteria) much faster, in turn speeding up the post-allocation administration process.
The phone option also allows housing providers to use different numbers for different languages, helping them achieve important accessibility targets.
In addition, by adding telephony to a CBL system, there is no need to invest in a call-centre resource because the whole process is automated for routine enquiries. This saves housing providers money and the applicant time as callers are always connected and processed. A basic system can answer up to 30 simultaneous calls, but can be easily scaled up to cope with greater demand.
Nottingham City Council didn’t have a dedicated team to answer the routine calls generated by CBL enquiries. As a result of our automated system, overheads have been reduced by almost 90 per cent and staff no longer need to worry about routine enquiries, leaving them free to deal with more complex issues.
The phone option also has the potential to make the post-bidding process more efficient, such as sending text messages to successful applicants, further shortening the post-allocation administrative process.
The data that we have received from local authorities with an IVR system, such as Nottingham City Council, Greenwich Council, Barnsley Council and Scottish Borders Council, shows that there is an almost-equal split between people using the phone or the web to place bids.
So a telephony-based system is clearly a viable option – one that delivers real benefits to housing providers and local authorities by enabling them to provide an inclusive, tenant-focused channel which drives efficiency and cuts costs.
John Wood is managing director of C3.
