linking repairs and asset management to neighbourhoods 2016/dave smethurst... · linking repairs...

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Linking repairs and asset

management to neighbourhoods

Dave Smethurst

Senior Associate: CIH consultancy

@CIHconsultancy Date: 19th May 2016

http://www.cih.org/consultancy


What I want to look at today

• We think that linking the impact a neighbourhood

has on your properties

– Demand

– Value

– Expenditure

…is the next big area for asset management

• Richard & I have led the work CIH has been doing

nationally on developing Neighbourhood working

principles and service planning

• Today I want to look at some useful ideas,

observations and questions that may help you

develop your own neighbourhood focused

approach

• Just like that!



Location, Location, location!

• Whether people want to live in a

neighbourhood is not just about the

condition of their home………..

• …….Its about what their

neighbourhood is like as well

• If the neighbourhood is troubled then

demand for properties suffers

• So Intelligent asset management

needs to focus on the neighbourhood

as well



Why was that again?

• To protect the organisation’s long term

investment

• This means:

– Knowing what you need to do differently in

different areas to protect your investment legacy

– Being able to make better decisions about what

and where to carry out future asset investment

and new build / refurbishment in the future

– Often the stock can’t be sold or swapped so you

may have no choice but to improve the

neighbourhood

– You also need to know what you need others to

do in the neighbourhood to protect your

investment



But how?

• N’hood focus sounds good but how?

• Obvious route is through existing

N’hood managemen t/ service delivery

frameworks

• Need to understand:

– What’s being done in the neighbourhood &

by whom

– Why it’s being done

– What you want to do, encourage or

support

• Need a way to approach this

systematically



CIH N’hood working Model

• CIH has developed a neighbourhood working methodology

aimed at improving neighbourhood sustainability

• Tested it in an 18 month national Pilot with 15 landlords

• Aimed at improving demand for the neighbourhood and

retaining the tenants already living there using

neighbourhood Service Plans (NSPs)

• Based on this we have developed a series of effective

neighbourhood working principles

• We will soon be launching these as a CIH Neighbourhood

Working Charter (currently part of another national Pilot)

• Principles are aimed at the best way to focus services and

resources on neighbourhood sustainability

• We think the principles are of real importance to asset and

property service managers ….

• …. if they want to understand where they could develop and

influence wider local service activity.



So what?

• The key connection for you is neighbourhood sustainability

• Because it is about stock demand and viability

• What are the key issues relating to this?

• How do the N’hood working principles apply to asset management

and help it to impact sustainability?



Defining N’hood Sustainability

• Plans Focus on neighbourhood sustainability

• Sustainability = whether people want to live and stay in a neighbourhood

• Determined by

– Quality of, and access to Services

– Quality of life

– Opportunities & life chances

• Plans identify what needs to be done to Improve neighbourhood sustainability = interventions



What do you most easily

influence?

• Access to/ quality of services?

• (e.g. Housing management, repairs, police)

• Quality of life?

• (e.g. Appearance, conditions, crime, mobility,)

• Life chances?

• (e.g. Jobs, education, proximity to

opportunities/work)

• Is there anything you influence more?

• Is there anything you can’t influence?

• Point is once you identify sustainability factors you

can focus on them to protect and develop demand

• How do you do this?



How do we impact sustainability?

• So questions for asset

management function here are:

– What sustainability factors do we

normally affect in neighbourhoods?

– What could we affect but don’t or

only sometimes?

– What do we want to affect but

can’t?

• Closely linked to another concept:

• Total, Partial or no Control (TPN)



TPN

• Way of determining the extent you need to rely on others to

do something

• In terms of sustainability interventions and asset

management e.g.s are:

– Total control: Building type, standards & design, major works

– Partial control: Day to Day Repairs, housing management,

environmental services

– No control: Policing, employment support, congestion, educational

standards, community cohesion

• Means you have to think about

– What strategies you want to employ to protect your assets?

– What else you can do to protect the neighbourhood?

– How do you want to work with others to do things you can’t?



Asset management plus?

• Do you remember ‘Housing Plus’?

• About:

– What over and above the core housing management function should be

done to improve the neighbourhood and help tenants?

• I think there is a need to develop the idea of ‘Asset Plus’ to address

neighbourhood issues

• What could this involve? E.g.s

– Helping address management issues through design

– Enhancing customer quality of life in shared areas

– Supporting health and education provision (Broadband, adaptations)

– Providing missing neighbourhood infrastructure

– Looking at customer profiles and impacts on property

– Effective partnership working and influencing strategies

• Want to look at how the CIH N’hood working principles may help flesh out

the asset management plus activity



N’hood working principles

• ‘We have a clear set of N’hood working

Principles’

• Evidence based decision making

• Having clarity through one list of agreed N’hood

issues

• Having a common working framework that

everyone is part of

• N’hood staff commissioning the services they need

• Developing N’hoods people want to live in and are

economically viable to manage

• Maximising the impact of all internal resources

used in N’hoods

• Maximising the level of external resources

deployed in the N’hoods



Questions these principles raise

• What evidence do you currently use to make decisions?

• What else might be useful and why?

• Do you know what the neighbourhood issues are?

• What things do you share a consensus on with others?

• Can your staff influence local service provision?

• Can others influence your provision or decision making?

• Do you just focus on core property factors to decide

investment patterns?

• What about demand factors?

• Are the resources you spend and those of other teams

being maximised to support your investments?

• What awareness of external agency services priorities,

resources, projects or funding do you have?

• How could these complement your asset investments?



Comparable local units/local focus

• ‘We have a local service focus’

• Have the asset team broken its stock down into local units?

• If not its hard to act at a local level…..

……or understand where different issues occur

• Do you use the same local area units as other internal teams

to plan or collect PI data?

• Do other teams local areas make sense to you?

• Do you know what areas external agencies use?

• Is your stock postcoded so you can can fit it into different

local areas?

• What are neighbourhood level numbers for you?

• Very hard to address local sustainability if this isn’t thought

about



Life Model

• Used as a tool to decide what management stance to take in neighbourhoods depending on stock numbers

• Stands for:

• Lead

• Follow

• Influence

• Exit

• Understanding your stock numbers in the context of local N’hood operating areas may be crucial in deciding whether to Exit and dispose of your assets!

16



Sustainability Rating and

comparison

• ‘We can rate and compare our stock in terms of sustainability?’

• Can you compare different areas for sustainability?

• If yes can you do it easily? At a glance? Do you have area ratings?

• Important for prioritising investment and spotting different trends

• How would you measure sustainability?

• Anything else you would you measure for viability? (cost? VFM?)

• What data do you actually have?

• What data do you use operationally

• What impact should sustainability issues have on stock viability assessments?



Simple Neighbourhood indicators

Internal E.G’s External E.G’s

•Voids

•Turnover

•Rent Arrears

•Neighbour Nuisance

•Customer Satisfaction

•ASB

•Repair costs

•Income

•Crime

•Employment

•Education Statistics

•Health Indicators

•Access to services

•Environment

( these are just Government IMD’s)



More sophisticated ones

Neighbourhood sustainability indicators

Indicator Measure

Household income % tenants on HB

% of Tenants subject to Size Criteria

% of Current Tenant Arrears

No. of Evictions

Demand Tenancy Turnover

% of Tenancies Terminated in 1st 12 months

Average Re-let Time

Average Void Rent Loss per Property (%)

Property sustainability No. of Jobs per Property

Non-core Works Cost per Property

SAP Rating - Energy Efficiency

Planned Spend per Property (next 10 years)

Resources/ VFM Cost per unit

Surplus per Unit - Surplus as % of Total Cost per unit

Resource Intensity

Community safety Perception of Crime in area

High Level ASB Cases

Medium Level ASB Case

Low Level ASB Cases

Disadvantage IMD - overall deprivation score

Digital Inclusion - Access to the Internet

Children in Poverty

Pensioners in Poverty

Level of Unemployment

Level of Disability

Level of Educational attainment

N’hood satisfaction satisfaction with the neighbourhood

satisfaction with the property

satisfaction with the housing service

satisfaction with other services

satisfaction with shops and facilities



Overall impact on sustainability

Neighbourhood sustainability indicators

Indicator Measure

Household income Housing benefit

subject to Size Criteria

Tenant Arrears

Evictions

Demand Tenancy Turnover

Tenancies Terminated in 1st 12 months

Re-let Time

Void Rent Loss per Property (%)

Property sustainability Jobs per Property


SAP Rating

Planned Spend per Property

Resources/ VFM Cost per unit

Surplus per Unit

Resource Intensity

Community safety Perception of Crime in area

High Level ASB Cases

Medium Level ASB Case

Low Level ASB Cases

Disadvantage IMD - overall deprivation score

Digital Inclusion

Children in Poverty

Pensioners in Poverty

Level of Unemployment

Level of Disability

Level of Educational attainment

N’hood satisfaction satisfaction with the neighbourhood

satisfaction with the property

satisfaction with the housing service

satisfaction with other services

satisfaction with shops and facilities

Overall rating? Some sustainability issues



What indicators could you influence?

Indicators asset management could influence directly and partially? Direct influence? Partial influence? No influence?

% Tenants on housing benefit Perception of Crime in area

% of Tenants subject to Size Criteria High Level ASB Cases

% of Current Tenant Arrears Medium Level ASB Case

No. of Evictions Low Level ASB Cases

Tenancy Turnover IMD - overall deprivation score

% Tenancies ended in 1st 12mths Digital Inclusion – Internet Access

Average Re-let Time Children in Poverty

Average Void Rent Loss (%) Pensioners in Poverty

No. of Jobs per Property Level of Unemployment

Non-core Works Cost per Property Level of Disability

SAP Rating - Energy Efficiency Level of Educational attainment

Planned Spend per Property (10 yrs) Satisfaction with the neighbourhood

Cost per unit Satisfaction with the property

Surplus per Unit - Satisfaction with the housing service

Resource Intensity Satisfaction with other services

Satisfaction with shops and facilities



Viability and sustainability

Components of Cost viability

Indicator Measure

Cost per unit Property cost + Management cost

(+debt?)

Surplus per unit Surplus Generated as % of Total Cost per

Property

Resource intensity

(The ‘hidden’ variable??)

% of Current Tenant Arrears against

Debit

Tenancy Turnover

Average Re-let Time

No. of Jobs per Property


Volume of ASB Cases - Rate per 100

Properties

Planned Spend per Property (Based on

next 10 years)

VFM for stock investment/spend Combined score for Cost, Surplus,

Resource intensity



Getting the best out of PI’s

• Indicators can really help you identify:

– What’s impacting on demand

– Where you could act now

– Where you could expand what you do

– Where you need others to help

• Also can help you make better decisions on stock investment

• A lot of asset viability/NPV assessment systems only use simple IMD neighbourhood appraisal

• Probably need to use this more sophisticated kind of data

• Because they better reflect demand and management viability

• (Been using this approach to develop the CIH stock appraisal tool)



Understanding local issues

• ‘We use a range of perspectives to

understand local issues’

• How do you understand what local issues are?

• This is different to trends from Indicators……

…..Its how the issues actually manifest

themselves in specific areas?

• E.g. The type of ASB issue will make a big

difference to potential asset management

solution. (surveillance? lighting? fencing?)

• So how would you find this out?

• Mainly from your staff, other teams staff,

customers, partners?

• What is your ‘local/ operational intelligence’

network like?



Who may know what?

• What different perspectives might tell you:

• Housing team may know:

– key vandalism hot spots and where to put

CCTV

– Need for different security systems

– Where property face lifts would help lets

• Tenants may know:

– Key environmental eyesores

– Need for shops and transport

– Where they feel unsafe

• Partners may know:

– Nature of criminal activity you may face

– Disability issues

– Need for broadband



Who can do what?

• ‘We have a range of possible interventions we can

do on our own or with partners’

• Generally nobody has a clear picture of the full range

of solutions open to them.

• Do you know what you could do to improve N’hood/

asset sustainability or help others to?

• Do you know what the rest of your organisations teams

could do?

• Do you know what other organisations could do?

• Do you know what solutions most fit your strategic

goals?

• Usually developing a list of possible interventions

is helpful with all of the above?



What you bring to the party

• Below are the sort of things Asset management often

delivers in NSP’s:

– Improving infrastructure, shops and community

facilities

– Developing complementary open spaces

– Solving traffic congestion and parking problems

– Improving visibility and surveillance

– Target hardening

– Improving security and kerb appeal

And of course:

– Improving the usage, utility and liveability of

properties with external and internal

improvements

• Massive quality of life impact!



Example of wider interventions

• Neighbourhood and community

– Increase staff presence in ASB hotspots

– Introduce advice services in community facilities

– More outreach youth services

• Home

– Improvement programme for garage sites

– Fencing review

– Improved parking provision

– More communal lighting

• Tenancy

Debt advice

More support services for young tenants

Additional services for elderly

Increase tenancy enforcement activity

• Involvement and empowerment

Tenant inspectors

Gardening club

Set up neighbourhood face book page



Local service plans

• ‘Have clear local service plans that show what we

think needs to be done to improve or maintain that

local area’

• These can act as a focal point for action, defining the

problems and solutions

• Shows the blend of services needed to solve problems.

(e.g. property, environmental, etc.)

• These plans can be modified to have a much greater

focus in one service area or type of issues

• What would you focus these plans on if you could?

• What management role would you have in the plans?

• …i.e. would you run them? Or do a plan with others?

• Would you do ones for customers?



Clear targets

• ‘We have clear internal and external operational

targets and accountability’

• Often involves developing operational action plans

• These break each intervention into the specialist tasks for

each team

• Then says who specifically should do what by when

• These give you practical process maps for who should do

what on joint working

• Really clear on accountability & great for staff

empowerment

• Could you link these to your own operational action plans?

• Would it help asset teams to have more defined roles

within tasks?

• Do you think the increased accountability would be helpful

for you?



Example action plan

Neighbourhood plan implementation table: Tipton N’hood Intervention Area Action in plan Detailed/ sub

actions

Due date Responsible team Managed by Assigned to

N’hood and

community

Increase

Targeted work on

fly tipping and

littering. Also

target graffiti in

partnership with

council

Increase day to

day monitoring of

fly tipping

By caretakers and

N’hood

coordinators

1/10/2013 N’hood team N’hood

Team leader

(named)

N’hood

coordinator

(named)

Caretaking team Caretaking

manager

(named)

Local caretakers

(named)

Increase frequency

of work on fly

tipping and

littering for

caretakers

15/10/2013 Caretaking team Caretaking

manager

(named)

Local caretakers

(named)

Agree protocol

with council on

who does what for

graffiti and agree

response times

21/11/2013 Caretaking team Caretaking

manager

(named)

N’hood manager

(named)

Regen team Regen manager

(named)

Regen manager

(named)



Monitoring and Impact

• ‘We are able to effectively monitor

what we do and assess its impact’

• About are you doing what you should be?

• And is it having an effect?

• What indicators and action plans do you use

now?

• What do they tell you about progress?

• How would you measure impact of asset

management?

• Useful to know how asset management issues in

N’hoods impacts different parts of the business

• How would you measure this?



Asset Management balanced

scorecard?

Balanced scorecard: organisational asset management Neighbourhood impacts

Impact on Performance and sustainability Cost

Improved property PI’s

Increased demand

Increased quality of life interventions

Benefit of SAP rating and fuel costs

More broadband connections

Customer satisfaction with homes

Customer satisfaction with communal areas

Customer satisfaction with appearance

Level of customer generated costs and

recharges

Cost of repeat repairs

Spends against neighbourhood budgets

change in management costs

Change in overall maintenance costs

Change In VFM %’s

Internal infrastructural expenditure

Staffing costs versus performance costs

Partnership Working Corporate strategy and Growth

Number of partnership sessions/forums/

initiatives

Increase in joint working with council teams

Level and frequency of inter agency contact

Level of external funding in cash and in kind

generated

Level of external infrastructural expenditure

Alignment of asset strategy in each N’hood

Creation or support of social enterprise and

jobs

Increase in stock values

Return on investment decisions

Increase in number of units

Level of customer scrutiny on Property



So what About ‘Asset +’

• So what do these do these principles tell you in respect of

developing your ‘A+’ approach? :

– N’hoods sustainability is key to long term stock viability and should

be the focus of A+

– Need to determine to what extent your A+ should focus on asset

interventions and on non asset interventions

– Then need to decide how you will do this strategically and on a day

to day basis across all neighbourhoods

• Hopefully the questions posed by the working principles will help

here

• But developing N'hood working also gives you an opportunity to

reposition your function in the organisation.

• This could be another element of your A+ approach



Smoothing the way?

• Some kind of neighbourhood planning approach can:

– Be a key access point for property teams in terms

of strategic planning and collaboration

– Be a springboard for something you need to do

organisationally

– Develop joined up working capability in property

through selected projects (e.g. matrix

management/action planning arrangements)

• There may also be benefits in developing a distinctive

& positive narrative for property services that

complements other teams goals.

• Lots of examples of asset teams initiating

neighbourhood plans to develop a broader approach.



Final thoughts

• Obviously N’hood sustainability Impacts your assets long term

• Not only does it affect you…..

• You can affect it!

• Hopefully some of these concepts and tools have been useful

• I do think it is the next big focus for you

• Really is Intelligent Asset Management!

• I think some kind of Asset Plus (A+) approach will help bring this to life for the sector

• The main thing is to use some of the things here today creatively to help you protect your assets by influencing your own and others local service planning.



Questions and discussion

Thank you for listening

Let’s discuss!

[email protected]


linking repairs and asset management to neighbourhoods 2016/dave smethurst... · linking repairs...

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