Housing news

Capita Housing selected by Devon and Cornwall Housing Group Capita Software Services has signed a contract to supply Capita Housing, its housing management software, to Devon and Cornwall Housing Trust (DCHT). The deal is worth £420k over 10 years and was agreed after a thorough market evaluation by DCHT.

Capita Housing supports best practice in housing management for all types of social landlords - from strategic housing authorities to national housing associations. It is designed to provide tangible service benefits to tenants and leaseholders while facilitating the delivery of service excellence.

“The DCH group sees the introduction of a single housing software system across the group as essential for introducing enhanced levels of customer service whilst at the same time improving management information and value for money,” said Duncan Walton, Group Director of Corporate Services at DCHT. “The choice of Capita was based upon the close fit to our users’ requirements, competitive pricing and the professionalism displayed by the Capita team in working to the group’s specific requirements.”

Roger Birkinshaw, Associate Director, Housing, at Capita Software Services, said: “We are looking forward to putting the partnership with the DCHT team into practice and delivering the benefits to customers within a challenging timescale.”

Housing implementations currently in progress include Devon and Cornwall Housing Group, Slough People First, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and Ocean HA.

New wins

April saw two new organisations join the expanding list of Capita Support customers this year. Aberdeenshire Council are taking Capita Support to enable them to effectively manage all of their support contracts to ensure services are delivered effectively to the citizens of Aberdeenshire.

"Social Work commissioning and contracting staff in Aberdeenshire Council have long recognised the need for a system to manage the contractual workload and record details of service providers, contracts and contract monitoring information. Having sourced two potential systems, each was evaluated against a list of service requirements and the Capita Support system was a clear winner. The system is now being configured to our particular situation and we are looking forward to implementation."

Jean Stewart-Coxon, Commissioning Team Manager, Aberdeenshire Council

The London Borough of Ealing also have taken the Support product. Ealing will be utilising the flexibility and breadth of functionality within Capita Support to deliver their Gateway services for Housing and floating support. The Ealing Gateway project will see both the council and their providers using Capita Support to manage the entire end to end process around client case file management, provider and service management, online forms, live matching of clients to services and the referral and placement process.

Pam Chima, Gateway Manager at London Borough of Ealing Council, commented:

"The London Borough of Ealing had a requirement to procure an electronic system to help them manage their ‘Gateway / Single point of access’, having sourced two potential systems, each was evaluated against a list of requirements and the Capita Support Gateway solution was seen to meet specific needs. The reporting module will make it much easier for us to monitor performance levels and evaluate the good work that we do in the Gateway, and that providers do in partnership with us."

Go lives

Housing recently welcomed two new Contractor customers - RCT Homes (RCT) and Colchester Borough Homes (CBH). Both organisations are using the desktop and mobile parts of the solution.

RCT are the largest registered social landlord in Wales and a long standing Housing customer who moved to Capita Contractor as part of a complete restructure of their repairs service delivery.

CBH had just cancelled their main responsive repairs contract and needed to get a system in fast for their direct labour force to use. Capita Contractor with its out of the box integration with Housing fitted the bill.

We have also had one Housing go-live in March with Rochford District Council becoming users of the system.

Housing implementations currently in progress include Devon and Cornwall Housing Group, Slough People First, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and Ocean HA.

Revenues and Benefits news

Mole Valley District Council has gone live with the Capita Payments module.

Lewes District Council is now live with the Capita Mobile solution for Revenues and Benefits.

Epping Forest District Council are now live with Benefits and Council Tax.

During February Malvern Hills District Council and Wychavon District Council both went live with Benefits, Council Tax and Business Rates. Along with Worcester City Council, all three have formed the South Worcestershire Revenues and Benefits Shared Service.

In January, Wealden District Council went live with Self-Service and e-Citizen. Modules included Council Tax, NDR, Housing Benefits and Landlord Access.

The merge of Vale Royal Borough Council, Ellesmere Port and Neston Borough Council and Chester City Council in to the newly created Cheshire West and Chester Council was successfully completed in April. They went live with the total Revenues and Benefits solution on 6th May - only the second unitary authority to do so in
the country!
 

Payment Management news Our local authority user base continues to grow, with a number of recent converts from users of alternative providers. One of the latest of which to go-live with the Capita Payment Management solution is East Lindsey District Council. Michael Payne, Systems Support Manager at East Lindsey, stated,

“When selecting a supplier we looked for one with a proven track record, solutions covering secure web, chip and pin, and telephone payments including integration with our online and face to face solutions, low cost of ownership and PCI DSS certification. Capita’s hosted solution ticked all these boxes.”

We were also selected as the provider of payment management solutions at the newly-formed unitary authorities of Cornwall, Northumberland and Central Bedfordshire.

Rob Wood, Acting Head of Strategic IT for Central Bedfordshire, took a lead role in selecting Capita. He said,

"I was very impressed by the flexibility, functionality and reliability of the product set. Mindful also of the increasing need for the security around card payments, we saw the obvious attraction of using an established managed service that is PCI DSS certified."