Claim OwnershipThe Social Housing Podcast
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The Social Housing Podcast will be a series of interviews with thought leaders in the Social Housing industry, providing them an exclusive platform to speak about topics important to them, while shaping the conversation around landlords and tenants.
31 Episodes
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In our latest episode, we’re joined by Suzanne Adams, a strategic leader with nearly three decades of experience in social housing, to explore how automation and emerging AI technologies are reshaping the sector. Drawing on her work leading digital transformation at Southern Housing, Suzanne shares practical insights into how housing providers can move from manual, resource-heavy processes to intelligent automation that improves services for both colleagues and residents. The conversation covers the realities of implementing automation at scale, the critical role of data quality, how to bring teams along the journey, and why the future lies not just in more technology, but in better-designed digital services that truly support people.
In this episode of the Social Housing Podcast, we're delighted to welcome Hassan Bahrani, Director of IT, Cyber and Data Security at Thirteen Group, and Nick Atkin, CEO at Yorkshire Housing! Our host Gary Haynes explores the relationship between AI and its involvement within social housing and opportunities for the future.
In this episode of the Social Housing Podcast, we're delighted to welcome James Woods, CEO of Citizens Advice Doncaster! Our host Carly Harling explores the different levels of support that Citizens Advice offer and whether housing associations are utilising it enough the way that they should be!
In this episode of the Social Housing Podcast, we're delighted to welcome Dave Loudon, leading sector consultant and owner of Digital Bark! Our host Peter Hudson dives into the challenges faced by the sector today and why we need to prioritise digital transformation...
In this episode of the Social Housing Podcast, we're delighted to welcome Hannah Harvey, Chief Operating Officer at Saffron Housing! Our host Peter Hudson dives into the challenges faced by housing associations with Saffron, and whether enough is being done to help support tenants.
In this episode of the Social Housing Podcast, we're delighted to welcome Jonathan Cocker, Chief Information Officer at Platform Housing! Our host Lewis Murray dives into the challenges faced by IT with Jon, as well as the importance of data and whether we're utilising it effectively.Make sure to subscribe and drop a comment with your thoughts!
In this episode of the Social Housing Podcast, we're delighted to welcome Ian Wright, the CEO of the Disruptive Innovators Network! Our host Peter Hudson explores the importance of communicating effectively with your tenants with Ian, as well as some interesting anecdotes during his time at DIN! Make sure to subscribe and drop a comment with your thoughts!
In this episode of the Social Housing Podcast, we're delighted to welcome Tom Robins, the CEO at Switchee! Our host John Doyle dives into the importance of customer centricity with Tom, as well as all the fantastic work Switchee are doing with the ongoing issue of damp and mould.Make sure to subscribe and drop a comment with your thoughts!
In this episode of the Social Housing Podcast, we're delighted to welcome Matt Baird, owner of the Social Housing Round Table! Matt is a leading recruitment specialist in the social housing sector and we hear his take on all things staffing, recruitment, skills and bringing in new ways of thinking.
In this episode of The Social Housing Podcast, Claire Heyes (ex-CEO of Corgi) discusses the issue of no access across the sector.
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Claire believes the six key factors contributing to no access are:
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👉 Human
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👉 Economic
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👉 Logistical
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👉 Technical
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👉 Political
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👉 Legal
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And during this conversation with our CEO, John Doyle, she talks about each of these factors and how as a sector we can start to improve no access rates.
In this episode, John Doyle (CEO of Voicescape) sits down with Jeremy Squire to discuss how they're helping social landlords solve the scheduling problem for their operatives.
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During the conversation they discussed:
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✅ The challenges FLS are helping social landlords solve.
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✅ Their proposition for social landlords.
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✅ The compliance challenges across the sector.
For many Landlords, the pandemic has shifted the way in which they engage with their residents.
With the courts closed and job loss at an all time high...
The "enforcement" approach became quickly redundant, post March 2020.
Residents were struggling more than they EVER had before.
And Landlords like Bournville Village Trust realised the "collecting with care" approach was exactly what residents required.
A *care approach* that focused on:
✅ Supporting residents to help pay the rent.
NOT...
❌ Enforcing them to pay the rent.
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In this episode of 'The Social Housing Podcast' Stephen Lawrence sat down with Gareth Sinnett to discuss how BVT have implemented this "collecting with care" approach.
During the conversation, Stephen & Gareth discussed:
✅ The Homeless Prevention Fund and how this helped reduce BVT's higher level debt cases.
✅ Pre-tenancy support and the importance of getting tenants setup on the right foot from day one.
✅ Why BVT have created the "energy advisor" role for tenants.
Do we have a “Pandemic of Disrepair?” 🤔
Over the last few months, there have been an increasing number of TV programs criticising the sector on the state of repairs and prevalence of disrepair claims.
But what is the 𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐋 picture?
i.e. not the “mass-media” picture but the picture from those who’re actually on the ground dealing with the reality of the situation.
Well, for this week's episode of The Social Housing Podcast - we’ve brought on someone who knows that ‘reality’ better than anyone else.
Russell Thompson FCIOB, Managing Director of Places Management at Places for People.
During the conversation, Lewis Murray & Russell Thompson discussed:
✅ The effect lockdown has had on repairs and “the repair lag” that it’s created.
✅ The ‘fabric first approach’
✅ Competing priorities; the need to build new homes as well as renovate old stock and achieve the Government's net zero and zero carbon targets.
Like every Housing Association over the last 18 months...
Platform have been faced with some monumental challenges.
❌ Backlogs of repairs.
❌ Backlogs of voids.
During this podcast conversation, Lewis Murray is joined by Marc Mayall (Operations Director at Platform Property Care) to discuss Platform's road to recovery post-pandemic.
Discussing areas and topics like:
✅ How Platform are tackling their backlog of repairs/voids.
✅ How Platform developing their apprenticeship program and why Marc believes that will be one of the key's to that road to recovery.
✅ How Platform are gearing themselves up to provide a top-tier service for customers in a post-pandemic era.
Transformation, change and continuous improvement are words and phrases that are often over-used in the social housing sector, which to many observers suffers from a high degree of cultural inertia.
And so for this weeks podcast I/we wanted to bring on a guest (Executive Director of Business & Improvement at Thirteen, Heather Ashton) who represents an organisation within the sector - that's truly innovative at its **CORE.**
...and also an organisation that focuses on walking the walk, not talking the talk.
During the conversation, myself/John and Heather discussed the following:
✅ How Thirteen is structured at a senior level to manage change.
✅ How Thirteen have embraced the home, hub & roam model throughout the pandemic + their future plans around their staff's working flexibility.
✅ The risks that come along with these post-pandemic organisational changes and how Thirteen are managing them.
𝘗𝘪𝘤𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴...
It’s May 2020, the courts are closed and you’ve got 1,000’s of council tax defaulters.
Where do you even start with trying to recover that debt? 🤯
Tough question, right?
Well, that was exactly what challenge the team at Middlesbrough Council were faced with this time last year.
So… how did they overcome it?
Well, in this week's episode of The Social Housing Podcast - Peter Hudson is going to be exploring that very question with both Mark Symmonds & Janette Savage from Middlesbrough Council.
Are RSL's part of the solution to the housing crisis or part of the problem?
That's the question I wanted to discuss for this weeks episode of The Social Housing Podcast.
And the best person to help me answer that question:
Gerraint Oakley, Executive Director (Growth & Development) at Platform Housing.
During the conversation we discussed:
✅ How the commerciality element within the sector is about being better, more efficient and driving profit so we can build more properties and deliver more services to support people.
✅ How the large surpluses HA's sit on - still requires a different type of skill set to use the profits effectively.
✅ The issues surrounding planning reform; namely things like Greenbelt which Gerraint thinks needs to be reviewed.
The episode will going live this Wednesday at 10am - click the link in the comments to either subscribe on Apple Podcasts OR follow on Spotify so you don't miss it!
Let's jump back 16 months for a minute.
It's March 2020 and the world is descending into what feels (and is for a lot of people) - a state of chaos.
Virtually overnight...
Unemployment has gone through the roof and claims for Universal Credit are higher than they've ever been.
For HA's and Landlords, like Citizen, this spells out **serious trouble**
"How are we going to service this debt, when so many of our tenants are facing such financial adversity?"
...was the question being asked by many HA's/Landlords up and down the country.
But for Citizen Housing, this created the 'perfect' environment for the introduction of proactive engagement technology/processes.
A perfect environment... that over the last year has led to their UC based arrears performance almost mirroring their general needs based arrears.
And so for today's podcast conversation, Lewis Murray explores exactly how Citizen have been able to achieve that as well as how they've been able to recover over £600k in former tenancy debt in the last year.
He's joined by Darren Newton & Paula Jenner, who've both been involved in the rollout of this "proactive engagement" program.
There's an abundance of software/technology available to housing providers nowadays:
✅ Housing management systems.
✅ Debt/rent collection softwares.
✅ Customer experience platforms.
...and while all of this tech is great and very useful.
If you're unable to tie all of these systems together.
And get them to speak to one another 🗣
You're likely:
A) Making the customer journey more complex and difficult than it was before you actually implemented the tech 🤦♂️
B) Not getting a "full picture view" of your tenancies because everything is operating in silos rather than together as a WHOLE.
A.K.A. You're doing digitalisation NOT digitisation.
Easy trap to fall into but a giant "inefficiency beast" if left alone.
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