The Challenge

To work with leaders and staff to take a fresh look at the council’s ‘overwhelmed’ housing register and devise new processes and ways of thinking to reduce the 17,000 waiting list.

Why change was needed

Staff found the long housing register ‘overwhelming’, with people having to wait up to four years to be found a home.

High numbers of people were registered as homeless because of the long wait.

Costs were spiralling and customers were dissatisfied with the service.

Barnet was spending three quarters of its budget on temporary accommodation, even though it had a high number of properties remaining empty for long periods.

What we did

The key was encouraging leaders and staff to look the issues from the home-seekers’ perspective, and mapping their customer journey through a bureaucratic, multi-layered system.

The waiting list was based on a point system but it was only 7% accurate and so congested it was unworkable. One home seeker with 2 small children had unsuccessfully applied for over 1200 different available properties that would fit her need.

Habanero worked closely with leaders, firstly understanding the system then helping staff to experiment to ‘beat it’, resulting in improvements.

We applied Lean principles to simplify procedures and give staff greater control. Instead of customers being passed from one person to the next, staff were allocated cases to follow from start to finish.

The Results

Waiting times were slashed from over four years to 17 days
Hard-to-let properties empty for more than a year were let within two weeks, as superficial issues were overcome with a tin of paint of second-hand furniture.
Staff’s active caseload has reduced on average from 40 to 14

The Client Says

“We are delighted to see the fruits of our labour really paying off. Customers used to walk through the door in tears and now we see people weeping with joy!

“The new way we work is a breath of fresh air. I now feel empowered to do the right thing for the customer and my job satisfaction has soared.”

Lean systems co-ordinator, Barnet Council