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How Housing Providers Can Implement UK Housing Data Standards

  Tatiana DeBerg  ·  2 minute read

There currently exists a continuous flow of work on developing newer and newer versions of Housing Standards for housing providers across the UK after research demonstrated that the social housing sector is notorious for ‘’bad data’’.

Although Data Standards in Housing is not a new concept, HACT have been a key player in the game by working alongside 50 leading housing associations and software companies, including L&Q, Hyde, Riverside, Home Group, Yorkshire Housing and Housemark to update versions 2.0, 3.0 and 4.0 of these standards.

What is the Current State of Play with Housing Standards?  

The beginning of 2019 saw the release of ‘Version 2.0’ of the UK Housing Data Standard which included nine new data exchanges based around reactive repairs, care and support, income collection, voids and allocations, and core customer data in the housing sector.

HACT are now partnering with a range of housing associations across the UK to develop ‘Version 3.0’ of the standards by the end of 2019 which are set to focus on three areas including:

  • Care and support;
  • Planned maintenance
  • Income and service charge collection

While the ‘Care and support’ element of the standards could deliver improvements in areas such as number of complaints and wellbeing measures of residents, the planned maintenance area of development are designed to help drive efficiency through data migration and capital planning. The ‘income and service collection’ element of version 3.0 could reduce the number of eviction and improve bad debt provision and write off.

But Are There Tenable Benefits to Adopting Standardised Data?

You may be wondering -aside from the above- what the advantage of the UK Housing Data Standards are. Well, the answer is that standardised data can aid your organisation to generate better data-driven business decisions.

The following outlines in more detail why they’re worth developing and following:

  1. They lead to quicker decisions and better business decisions by analysing data across multiple systems
  2. Using data effectively leads to better business intelligence because it allows us to think ahead about pre-empt future issues before they become business critical
  3. It can lead to lower costs around service sharing and business integration
  4. They help to give an organisation better agility to pick and chose the innovations and technology your business needs
  5. They lead to better collaborative working by sharing data with other partnering organisations and services
  6. They provide us with better analysis of comparative performance and cost insights
  7. Following the data standards is showing consideration for much needed innovation

How Can Other Providers Get involved in Developing the Standards and Learn More?

HACT are strongly encouraging housing providers, software organisations and other key players in the game to collaborate with them by getting in touch and becoming involved with the development of the data standards.