Illustration of Redbridge Council HQ with Red Background
Rising Temporary Accommodation costs

Like many local authorities across the UK, the London Borough of Redbridge is having to deal with the major challenge of rapidly rising costs in Temporary Accommodation (TA). With a growing reliance on both the costly private rental market and emergency housing, the Council was looking for a more strategic approach to improving outcomes for tenants and at the same time reducing financial pressures.

Redbridge engaged 4OC to support the implementation of its TA strategy. The main focus of this strategy was to support the Borough in finding more affordable accommodation and ultimately reducing the number of people entering the TA system and making sustainable cost savings for the Council.

A Strategic Approach to Housing

Bringing our experience in developing Housing Strategy, Project Management and Data Modelling, 4OC have been working with the Council to:

  • Engage the private rental market: Strengthening partnerships with private landlords to increase TA provision
  • Maximise funding opportunities: Assessing and implementing leasing models to address the subsidy gap (e.g., a 10 years plus 1 day leasing scheme to recover more costs from the Department for Work and Pensions)
  • Improve discharge processes: Streamlining systems and processes to reduce TA stays and help people move on faster
  • Work with housing partners: Securing commercial agreements with Registered Providers to ensure a sustainable property supply
  • Increase early intervention and prevention: Improving support to prevent homelessness before it happens
What Redbridge has already achieved

By taking a strategic, data-driven approach, Redbridge has made rapid progress in reshaping its TA system. Working together with 4OC, the Council is now creating a more sustainable and cost-effective housing solution for its communities – one that delivers better outcomes for residents while saving millions in public funds.

If you’re facing similar issues in your area, get in touch support@the4oc.com and together we can work out the most appropriate way forward for your council.

The challenge

Platform Housing Group (Platform) faced a couple of key challenges with its projects and programmes. It did not have full visibility of the projects being delivered across the organisation, nor were there sufficient controls in place in the existing project approval process.

A need was identified to establish an Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO) to better ensure that approved projects would support the organisation to work towards and deliver on its strategic aims and objectives. Additionally, the EPMO would help improve visibility across the organisation’s portfolio of projects and programmes and, ultimately, increase overall performance, delivery and project success.

How did we help?

Platform required support in the development of key EPMO processes, particularly the project request and approval process, review and refinement of existing EPMO templates and development of a launch plan.

Having previously delivered some work with Platform, there was already a clear understanding of how each organisation worked. For this project, the 4OC team worked closely and collaboratively with key Platform stakeholders to:

  • understand existing project governance challenges, identifying gaps and improvement opportunities.
  • develop and refine best practice EPMO document templates.
  • co-design a bespoke project approval process
  • develop workforce engagement plans and communication materials for increasing staff buy in and embedding EPMO processes across the organisation.
The 4OC magic

4OC supported Platform to resolve its challenges by focusing on a few key areas. By driving consistency, transparency and quality through a standardised project approval process, Platform could begin to foster a culture of excellence and commission projects that would help the organisation achieve its strategic aims and objectives.

The 4OC team prioritised building the capacity and capabilities of existing staff through the development of best practice document templates, ensuring resources were equipped to effectively manage the ever-changing demands of project and programme management.

Overall, our support enabled Platform to launch an effective EPMO, positioning the organisation for successful project and programme delivery.

What Platform said...

“4OC were extremely helpful to us in a time when our team was particularly stretched. Having the 4OC support enabled us to launch our function with a suite of easy to use, well branded templates. We launched a project request process, with supporting documentation and communications developed by 4OC. The team also provided us with a recommended launch approach and 12-month engagement plan to ensure continued success for our function.

Overall, I would highly recommend engaging with 4OC if you need some additional support in launching your PMO or project management service.”

Tamara Fyffe

 

"...I would highly recommend engaging with 4OC..."
From outlines to fully fledged Cases

The IoW NHS Trust is an integrated Trust which provides acute, community, mental health, and ambulance services to an island population of 140,000.

The Trust commissioned 4OC to deliver a series of three Treasury Green Book-compliant business cases for their £48m programme of digital and estates transformation, which enables the delivery of high-quality, safe care to local people.

We delivered a Programme-level Strategic Outline Case, followed by Outline and Full Business Cases for the £30m estates investment.

The business cases were developed during a period when the Trust, in common with the whole of the NHS and wider health system, was under extreme operational pressures because of the Covid-19 pandemic. We worked hard to balance engagement with key stakeholders involved in the development of the cases with the need to minimise demand on their time during an exceptionally challenging period for the Trust.

Working in Partnership

The development of the business cases also required the co-ordination of input from other partners, including the Trust’s cost advisor, design team and Principal Supply Chain Partner. We ensured that the cases were developed to time and in line with regulator expectations and requirements.

Our small team of experienced health care consultants drew upon their significant experience of NHS and commercial capital schemes and business case development to ensure that all three business cases reflected the needs and aspirations of the Trust, whilst also being compliant with Green Book requirements.  We supported the Trust in updating plans to reflect learning from the pandemic, building the justification for the inclusion of an additional ward reconfiguration project at Outline Business Case stage.

Thoughts from the Trust

“The 4OC team has provided the Trust with first rate support to our £48m investment programme. The 4OC team consistently produces high-quality outputs, working to tight timescales. The Strategic Outline Case produced by the team was top notch and was approved by our regulators and the Treasury on first submission. It feels as though we are working in a genuine partnership with 4OC – we do together as opposed to being ‘done to’.”

Darren Cattell, Chief Executive

“The 4OC team brought considerable experience and insight in order to help the Trust with our business case development process. The team delivered all three business cases on time, and successfully met the expectations of the Trust and our regulators.”

Richard Harvey, Programme Manager, Investing in Our Future Programme

“The Strategic Outline Case ... was approved on first submission”

Our team worked in partnership with the Trust to produce three HM Treasury Green Book-compliant business cases, successfully securing regulatory approval for each case.

4OC supported the Trust in developing a robust case for updating the estate to reflect learning from the Covid-19 pandemic, ensuring the continued delivery of high-quality, safe care to local people.

If you’d like to find out more about how we delivered this work, or our approach to partnering, strategies and business casing, please contact us at support@the4oc.com

 

To find out what we do in Health, please visit our Health page

To find out what else we do in other sectors check out Our Work

The Challenge

In response to the Covid-19 outbreak, the government advised Local Authorities to set up ‘Community Hubs’ in each borough to support the 1.5m people considered to be ‘most at risk’ of severe illness should they contract the virus. As this ‘shielded’ group is required to self-isolate for at least 12 weeks, councils must be in contact with them to determine their needs and if they are being met. This approach reflects a new partnership approach between local and national agencies to support those in our communities.

Initial guidance of how to set up and run the hubs, from Central Government, was understandably limited as the new approach was develop with urgency and Councils have had to respond on a best endeavours basis to ensure that this vulnerable group are not placed at greater risk. It is recognised that the new support model will evolve to reflect learning from its implementation across the country. With resources already stretched, Harrow Council asked for our assistance.

The main challenge was the co-ordination and management of a very willing, enthusiastic and complex supply chain involving all Council services, multiple voluntary organisations and  Distribution Hubs.

Because of the scale and speed of response, normal governance,  decision making and prioritisation of activity would not be fit for purpose and so a new framework was required to ensure that there was clarity of about the purpose of the hub and how it would operate, in the short, medium and long term.

Getting a Community Hub designed, approved and delivered in just 3 Weeks
The Response

The Council had already identified a supply chain and quickly instigated some services. They recognised that the scale of the response required them to have robust processes in place so that the collective efforts of the many stakeholders involved are as effective as possible and no effort was wasted.

On the first day, we recognised that this hub may need to be in place for some time and that service user need would change and become more complex, so there needed to be mechanisms set up to track and monitor how the hub operated and the impact to the council and services users.

We were able to get a plan in place within one day of starting work. This provided reassurance to the team that there was a clear way forward. Our team worked side by side with Council staff and within 6 days the team worked through and established:

  • A common understanding, across all stakeholders of the purpose of the hub and what services it was, initially, offering
  • How the hub would operate and where the hand-offs occurred across providers and council departments. This includes defining the outbound processes and how the hub responded to requests for support. We identified and mapped core business processes, and roles and responsibilities of individuals across the supply chain
  • A framework for capturing information and requirement specification so that systems can be refined for capturing this systematically on an ongoing basis
  • A continuous improvement process that captures real time lessons learned
  • Profiled resource across the supply chain
  • Developed daily, weekly and Cabinet reporting
  • Set up a risk management process
The Outcome

Harrow Council now have:

  • An operating model so everyone is clear what the outcomes will be, roles and responsibilities and how to communicate effectively
  • New Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) to avoid confusion and double handling of work
  • A Resource Model and an understanding of how to deal with the impact of a self-isolating workforce
  • Consistent, useful reporting to the exec teams
  • A Continuous Improvement framework to allow the teams to be constantly tuning and improving how they deliver this service

With new information being generated every day, the structure of the service we designed and implemented allows decisions to be made quickly and the implications of them understood.

And finally, the impact assessment and continual improvement capability now allows the council to be responsive to the rapidly changing needs of their most vulnerable residents.

 

Jonathan Milbourn, Head of Customer Services and Business Services, added:

‘The 4OC team brought order and structure when we were at our most turbulent. They didn’t get in the way, they listened and then produced, taking pressure off our teams. They did this with no fuss, good humour and an empathetic ear. Their outputs and approach have given us all an increased level of control and confidence when we need it most’

 

 

The challenge

The Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) is a central government department, with responsibility for inspecting services providing education and skills for learners of all ages. Ofsted also inspect and regulate services that care for children and young people.

Ofsted required business analyst resources to help support ongoing system and process developments across the business to improve their operations. We entered into a call-off contract in January 2017 with the option for extensions every 12 months to continue providing business analyst support for a diverse range of projects as required. To date the contract is going and we have delivered several successful outcomes some of which are listed below.

£10 million of savings identified and delivered
The response & outcome

Over a two year period we have been able to develop our understanding of Ofsted and their customers and to use our operational, commercial and change management experience to support a wide range of projects.

To date our partnership with Ofsted has included the following projects:

  • Improving the pre-inspection process: Providing support analysing the current operational delivery ultimately leading into the development of a high-level blueprint for Ofsted in 2020. The approach included Value Chain Analysis to understand current processes, systems, constraints and ideas for improvement, followed by workshops and interviews. Pre-Inspection was subsequently identified as a key area for further investigation. We reviewed the current options for improvement, scoped out possible changes, and produced a project proposal to be presented to the Transforming Together Board.
  • Developing standards and documentation: The Operational Change team required support in the development of Business Analyst standards and documentation required to support the substantial levels of change within Ofsted. We designed and developed the required documentation templates including a Value Chain map, Options Appraisal, Gap Analysis, Roadmap for change, and Customer Journey map.
  • Developing commercial solutions: The Commercial Team required help formalising, documenting, and developing underlying solutions for their business. We established the Business Requirements for the Commercial and Contracts Management across three business areas.
  • Improving citizen engagement: We undertook Contact Discovery work to help Ofsted with the development of previous work carried out in reviewing the way they manage citizen engagements across the organisation. This work involved understanding who the citizens are, preferred channels of contact, how Ofsted handle contacts and associated processes, and understanding the types of contacts received, volumes and trends. We produced a Programme Plan, Cost and Resource Model, Service Catalogue (describing Ofsted services from a citizen perspective), and Target Customer Journey and Value Chains.
  • Scoping a new Customer Relationships Management (CRM) system: Ofsted were looking to review the use of CRM within its main Contact Centre. Staff from teams using CRM were engaged through a combination of group workshops, service scoping interviews and shadowing sessions to understand how they use CRM and the challenges they face in its use. We captured the business processes in a service catalogue and identified seven drivers for change themes. We produced a Discovery Outcome Report that detailed our findings, including high-level business requirements and identified potential improvements activities, and produced a set of recommendations.