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The government has described the problem of increasing waiting lists and limited stock as a ‘national crisis’. Great Yarmouth was a perfect example: there were 6,000 people on the waiting list (and it had been forecast to double within 5 years), limited social housing stock and decreasing budgets. Then they decided to study their service from a different perspective. Today there are 164 people on the waiting list. The reduction in waiting list isn't the exciting story. The exciting story is what they have done to the rest of the service. It is a paradigm shift in service provision. It is the reason why councils and public bodies from across the country are flocking to visit them. It’s a truly amazing story.
The Birth of CBL [Listen to Bridget Southey left]
Local authorities must have a scheme that gives preference to those in most need when allocating social housing. The previous government attempted to increase fairness through transparency and choice in the allocation of properties by promoting the Choice Based Lettings (CBL) scheme. Almost every local authority and housing association in the country took-up the scheme. In 2003 Great Yarmouth was one of the first authorities on the East coast to sign-up for the CBL scheme. Applicants who contacted their authority were sent an application form to fill-in and return. Then they were then given priority bandings (Gold, Silver or Bronze). All properties were advertised on the online CBL software and applicants then made bids. The applicant with the highest banding got the property. In the back-office, a document management and work-flow system organised the paperwork. Everybody who applied was added to the waiting list. Great Yarmouth had 6,000 on their waiting list. Mark Burns, Head of Community Housing at Great Yarmouth decided that the service needed to be studied from a different perspective.
The Vanguard Method
The Vanguard Method begins with the model for Check. It is a way that organisations can study performance from the perspective of their customers (‘outside-in’). What the method helped to uncover at Great Yarmouth has had a profound effect upon staff. In demand-driven systems the purpose of the service (‘what we are here to do’) can be difficult to understand and early attempts are often discarded. Often it is the close study of demand using new principles that really forms the bedrock of an amazing shift in thinking and, as a consequence, service design.
The tyranny of forms [Listen to Bridget Southey and Kim Tugwell left]
At Great Yarmouth, the initial study of the system discovered some superficially interesting findings about the true performance from the customer’s perspective. After the initial contact from service users the majority of further contact was by letter. Just to get past the front door to be accepted took months. Each application generated huge efforts of logging, processing and filing across the three IT systems. Kim Tugwell, Home Select Case Worker, said that spending all day ‘processing application forms’ felt like being ‘on a treadmill never getting anywhere’. The system also generated hostility and almost 10% appealed against their banding. The real learning followed quickly.
The folly of banding
The first major learning point was that the priority banding did not mean that you would be housed any quicker. It took on average up to 30 months to be housed.
Gold band mean = 675, UCL* = 1592 days
Silver band mean = 750, UCL = 1960 days
Bronze band mean = 655, UCL = 2316 days
*The UCL = the Upper Control Limit, a statistical measure that tells you predictably and reliably how long it could take the service to resolve your problem
Housing need
The next thing that astonished the team was when they began to speak to people on the waiting list. Many of them were not in housing need (56%). They could be removed from the list. Two thirds of all people contacted required their records to be updated. More learning came when they began to understand the amount of activity that the CBL process generated. Of the 105 properties advertised 2,600 bids were received. It became clear that the CBL process gave users no real choice or real control, just the illusion of control.
Understanding real need [Listen to Bridget Southey Left]
The next discovery emerged gradually. It is a lesson about closely understanding demand. One housing applicant (Ivy) made contact during Check. Ivy wanted to move to a one-bedroom bungalow. Her application form included a medical form guaranteeing a higher banding. This would have secured Ivy a silver band classification and allowed her to bid online. One-bedroom bungalows are rare and there were very few in her chosen location. She would never be housed adequately and she will remain on the list in the expectation that a house may become available. So conditioned were the team that it took a great deal of debate and three phone calls to truly understand her nominal value (what mattered about how a service could best be delivered to her). As the team asked her more questions, they learnt that Ivy actually loved the house she was living in, but could not afford a gardener to maintain the garden. Her mobility was gradually being reduced over time. Her real need was help with her garden and to stay in her home, so the team arranged for a voluntary group to do the gardening for her, allowing her to continue to live in the same property, where she was happy.
Solving people's problems & say goodbye to CBL
The assumption was that everybody who made contact did so because they wanted a house, making the de-facto purpose of the service ‘I want a house’. When they began to listen carefully and ask questions, what they found was that many people who made contact were actually suitably housed but needed a different housing-related problem solved. The application form and the system design ensured that people making contact never really got to speak to a human being. All demand (100%) got translated into ‘give me a house’ in the past. In the new system, demand looks like figure 1.
Figure 1. J. Mortimer Flow of demand into Great Yarmouth (2010)
Previously, all applications were turned into demand for a house. In reality only 15% of that demand had a high housing need. High housing need of itself does not mean that that the solution should be social housing. Often people asking for help only wanted help with a deposit so that they could move into private accommodation or needed help to solve a dispute involving a private landlord. There are a huge range of solutions that can be tailored to solve each particular problem. The real demand into the system might even suggest that the housing crisis that we are warned of is perhaps not as bad as it might seem. Imagine if 5 million was actually only 15% (750,000) in high housing need and the rest just needed help! It is only possible because staff were free to have conversations and understand what the real problems were and what mattered to them. Gone are the application forms and the multiple and expensive IT systems that stopped people listening and understanding what was important to service users. Great Yarmouth are shortly to end the Choice Based Lettings scheme that drove so much failure and cost into the system and stopped them from helping the people that they were there to serve. The old waiting list is slowly being contacted and so far hardly any significant housing need has been found. The new service focuses upon real need and it is freeing staff to both understand and then become creative in helping people resolve that problem releases huge energy and creativity. It turns people from paper shufflers back into human beings. Only people can absorb the huge variety that is presented in human service systems.
84% of demand is currently being satisfied and the team are experimenting all of the time with new ways to satisfy demand and help people solve their problems. The Home Select team have a new purpose now expressed in customer terms: ‘help me solve my housing problem’. Bridget Southey, Home Select Manager said that the job is now much more satisfying as it is about ‘getting out there, building relationships and understanding people’.
A new purpose [Listen to Bridget Southey and Kim Tugwell left]
The big finding about this is that the service had been designed to ration properties and make people jump through hoops. This was to protect the system from a public who would be devious enough to ‘try it on’ to get a property. The application was the perfect embodiment of this thinking: a long document that asked questions designed to sift out lies, with little or no relevance to the real problem that people needed help with. In fact the application form acted like a dumb front-end, unresponsive and bureaucratic. The real finding is that people told the truth and they generally wanted help to solve a problem. The logic follows that this leads to a dramatic re-orientation of purpose. The team realised that the application form could not be a reliable method for understanding people’s real problems. Only human beings can absorb the variety of demand presented by service users. Public bodies that learn to understand and design against this demand can massively improve the lives and help solve the problems of local people. At the same time this drives out cost, failure and frustration in the lives of voters. That has to be a vote-winner!
Old Versus the new system
| Old System |
New System |
| 6,000 waiting list |
164 waiting list |
| 30% or less demand satisfied |
80% demand satisfied |
| No real knowledge of when properties become available |
Can predict types properties available specific areas using data |
| Large list to manage |
Small list to satisfy |
| 3 IT systems £32,000 |
1 spreadsheet |
| Advertising £30,000 a year |
No advertising |
| Aggression and frustration in service users |
No aggression & frustration but real gratitude for help with solving their problems |
| Unknown cost of not helping solve problems presented into other parts of the system |
Solving people's problems here prevents them from showing up elsewhere in the council |
For more information please contact
or (Vanguard consultant responsible for pioneering the work with Great Yarmouth)
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