We collaborate with Coventry City Council to help tackle their biggest housing challenges
Over the last 6 months we have been talking to Coventry City Council about our innovation work with ?What if! and initially they were particularly keen to hear more about our Fresh Start Standard pilot which includes fresh decoration, new flooring and other renovations as standard throughout our void properties.
Earlier this month, we held an Away Day with the Council’s Housing Team to build a shared approach to innovation in housing.
Throughout the day we pinpointed four important challenges facing Coventry which we could solve better together.
These are:
- How can we empower tenants through information and support so that they’re never left in the dark when applying for housing?
- How can we tailor our home matching services to individual needs?
- How can we think beyond the property to ensure our tenants feel safe and at home in their neighbourhood?
- How can we overcome silos to collaborate more effectively?
Our Chief Operating Officer, Kate Still, said: “It was great to hear that Coventry City Council had been in touch following the communications activity around our Fresh Start Standard pilot.
“They were really impressed with our very different approach to innovation. We agreed to host a joint away day focused on developing a one team approach to housing in Coventry.
“It was a really exciting and refreshing day, completely changing our relationship from it being based on them commissioning our services, to us collaborating and co-designing services that best meet the human and business challenges of housing and homelessness in Coventry.
“We now have a joint action plan for the next 12 months and most importantly we have started to develop very different relationships with their team which is very positive.”
Together with Coventry City Council we’ll be running experiments over the next few months to try and solve these challenges together.
Our plans will start in April 2020 and at first will be focused on testing ideas to solve the Council’s challenges in finding temporary accommodation for single people.
For media enquiries contact our Communications Team.
