Social Housing round up, reflecting on 2021

In the social housing sector, 2021 presented us all with many challenges. Whether it was navigating through a ‘new normal’ of hybrid working or accelerating digital transformation; technology has played a significant role helping social housing providers to achieve their vision.

With new regulations and changing demands of residents to contend with, MRI Social Housing has been on hand to support the sector to realise it’s full potential through intelligent data management, ground-breaking research to help improve the lives of residents and creating safe and secure homes and communities.

In 2022, we expect to see these themes become more prevalent and they continue to be major talking points with our clients, as we look to optimise the solutions already in place and make them work smarter. We are excited to bring new technologies to the sector,  to achieve compliance and energy efficiencies, elevate customer service at every touchpoint and ensure a resident-first approach.

Looking back on 2021, we’ve rounded some of the highlights of the work we have done with the sector to help our customers transform ways of working, through the innovations, resources and initiatives we have.

Achieving customer vision for workplace agility:

• Returning to work safely with Beyond Housing
• Soho Housing build resilience into their business  cloud hosting services
• Watford Community Housing streamline their housing management system and facilitate a better remote working experience

Achieving customer vision for safer communities and prioritising residents:

• East Ayrshire Council – co-creating housing allocations to help residents find the right homes
• Horsham District Council  – reducing homelessness
• Poplar HARCA – safeguarding communities
• MSV Housing – using income analytics to support early intervention, through food and fuel poverty risk management

Achieving customer vision for strengthened income and finance processes

• Midland Heart – improving efficiency & productivity in the finance department
• Hafod Housing & Dacorum Borough Council – using tenancy analytics to tackle arrears an fraud

Latest resources and new solutions:

• Revolutionising service charges – built with the sector for the sector
• Helping to deliver safe and secure communities – a digital guide to our solutions
• The data revolution, our solutions for data-handling in social housing
• Our e-book guide to taking a strategic view of your housing stock with asset management

Ground-breaking research initiative, the Resident Voice Index™:

We are helping the sector to capture the sentiment of residents across the UK in order to turn their feedback in to actionable insights that can enhance and transform resident lives.

As the social housing white paper has gone into consultation to release tenant satisfaction measures, our first report released last year explored resident perspectives on their surrounding neighbourhood and communities, safety concerns and access to amenities.

You can find out more and explore the results from our first survey here. In 2022, we look forward to sharing results of our second survey – tackling resident perspectives on Community Support and Life after Lockdown.

What’s next?

As we continue to work closely alongside the sector and our clients, we are looking to bring further innovations from our proptech portfolio to the social housing sector, to help improve energy efficiency, manage all properties across your portfolios and harness AI for property management.

With a vast portfolio of solutions across Housing and Community, Repairs and Asset management, Finance, Digital and Data, we look forward to serving the sector in 2022, building on the great solutions we already have in place, ensuring they continue to work smart for our clients. With a constant eye on future regulatory changes across building safety, the net-zero agenda and resident satisfaction, our product and development teams are constantly evolving our solutions to ensure our technology solutions keep pace with the changes in our sector’s landscape.

Our vision is simple, it’s to help our clients realise their vision, with the power of technology. We look forward to sharing more success stories and continue to play our part in helping to transform resident services and make a positive impact on communities.