WREN Housing Solution - Case Study
At the end of June 2022 there were over 94,000 households in temporary accommodation.
Find out how WREN Housing have been helping families and individuals be placed in safer and more compliant temporary accommodation today by using our Access Adam Housing solution.
Who are WREN Housing?
WREN Housing Solutions is a collective of 4 London Boroughs; Waltham Forrest, Redbridge, Enfield, and Newham.
Since 2015 WREN has been working with Adam, now known as Access Adam Care Commissioning, to deliver market leading temporary accommodation, allowing them to place homeless individuals and families back into suitable and safe accommodation across London.
Why did WREN Housing decide to work with Access Adam?
When WREN started using Access Adam Housing in 2015 they wanted a solution that made tracking compliance easier, saved staff time, whilst ensuring staff were confident in making placements for families and individuals on the system.
Local Authorities are continuously struggling to provide enough available accommodation to those who need it. By using Access Adam’s expertise in digital commissioning and the knowledge from the local authorities housing teams, a new end to end housing solution was created. This enabled WREN Housing staff to act fast and be more confident when managing the demanding temporary accommodation process.
The outcomes of using Access Adam Housing Solution
Through working with WREN Housing our Access Adam Housing solution was created to allow all processes and information to be centralised in one place to help create quicker and safer housing placements, a more streamlined invoicing process and a better visibility of the temporary housing market as a whole.
1. Quicker, safer and more accurate placements
One of the biggest outcomes WREN Housing have experienced since working with us is the ability to place individuals and or families into safer temporary accommodation quicker. It has allowed WREN Housing teams to act faster and be smarter in their decision – making.
The interactive maps show live updates of the 100% complaint housing available and can be filtered to a more refined search to help local authority teams find accommodation that meets specific and more personalised needs quicker, such as being in a walking distance to a school or near a laundrette.
Since Access Adam started working with WREN Housing, we have automatically checked over 8,500 safety certificates from over 2,300 different providers. This has helped instil more confidence in the system as our end-to-end solution stops any non-compliant landlords placing bids until their regulations and documents are updated. Our automated processes therefore have helped place over 6,000 households into safer and more compliant temporary housing.
2. Improved invoicing and billing
WREN’s invoicing and payment processes has improved in efficiency massively since 2015. Once providers have placed their bids and the winning bid has been confirmed, the process of contacting, invoicing, and paying providers can be automatic and completed within the system.
This has helped improve the cash flow of WREN’s providers, reducing the risk of landlords missing payment, while giving full visibility to local authority payment teams as every payment can be monitored and invoices accurately generated straight away.
3. Improves visibility of the market
Since WREN Housing started working with us at Access Adam Housing we have provided them with real-time information that can be accessed continuously. This has given WREN Housing staff even more confidence that they can help place individuals quickly in safer accommodation even when there is a high demand.
Patterns can be identified to help WREN staff investigate and deduce why some areas need more temporary accommodation than others to help WREN gain control back over its local area’s supply base. These trends can then be compared to other areas of London to help WREN ensure there is fairer pricing across the area according to regional rates.
Compliance is one of the most important features we have built into our housing commissioning system. By focusing on compliance and risk management, we save admin teams huge amounts of time, locating, uploading and managing data in the system, ensuring the councils meet their statutory duties of the Housing Act 1996 and their expanded requirements of the Homelessness Reduction Act 2017 continuously.
All the key information you need is there, you can see the availability straight away, you can drill down into specifics quickly – and when you combine that with the filtering options you have, it’s a really appealing tool to use – especially when you have to act fast.
How The Future Looks Like For WREN Housing:
We have been working with WREN Housing for nearly a decade and we have been able to see first-hand how our housing solution has helped. We have seen our Housing platform help WREN Housing to:
- Save crucial time by quickly placing citizens in the most appropriate accommodation using our instant property availability module
- Help control the spiralling costs by listing oversight to ensure that properties are only booked at or below regional rates
- Have 100% confidence in listing compliance by containing all relevant property information and valid compliance certification
- Have better automated invoicing processes to deliver FTE savings and prevent the need to manually receive and upload invoices
- Create a single system to engage with suppliers from registration through to payment with total transparency
- Establish a single tool for contract management to track open complaints and repairs, flag issues and track document expiry with automatic alerts to trigger improved supplier behaviour
We cannot wait to see how they can help reduce homelessness further across their London Boroughs and we are looking forward to seeing first-hand how our platform helps more individuals and families be placed into safer homes.
To find out more information about how our Access Adam Housing Commissioning can help make temporary housing more permanent download our housing guide today.
Contact us now and let us help your local community place individuals into safer accommodation that meets their needs quicker to help reduce homelessness and the ever-growing waiting lists for temporary accommodation.