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 Issue

Coming out of the pandemic, Soho Housing was having a mini-identity crisis (as were a lot of us!).

More than other organisations, it was challenged by the post-pandemic (r)evolution of cities for communities who live and work there. It had also experienced a larger than normal turnover of staff, and had a new chief executive, Barbara Brownlee, who had joined in the middle of pandemic mode and wanted to lead the organisation beyond that.

The organisation is also preparing to celebrate their 50th anniversary in June 2023, and it was recognised that the vision and direction required some ‘oomph’ (a technical term) among staff and residents.

The scope involved listening to residents, and supporting the board and staff to work out what Soho Housing’s vision should be, and how it should be implemented.

How did we fix it?

In true 4OC style, we believe the best way to delve into an organisation is through co-design and speaking to the people directly involved. Our specialist Housing team facilitated conversations with a broad range of stakeholders from Board level through to residents, adapting our approach to each group.

The phrase ‘Amazing place to live, amazing place to work’ had previously struck a chord with everyone, but on its own didn’t mean anything. It wasn’t grounded and embedded in strategic and day-to-day decision-making. At the core of a powerful vision is a common understanding of what an organisation constantly strives to achieve.

We engaged with Board members via one-to-one and group sessions, including founding members, which gave us unparalleled access to the organisation’s legacy and history. With Directors and Head of Departments, we spent time in one-to-one sessions to really understand the challenges Soho Housing has. We held group sessions for all 25 staff members, a resident workshop and worked with our partner, AKOU, who are supporting Soho Housing on a resident consultation project.

To support our qualitative work, we produced a number of deliverables including identifying key activities that would drive the vision and setting Design Principles to help how strategic and day-to-day decisions should be made.

What Soho thought...

“After Covid, we discussed new ways of working and how to get closer to our residents. Performance was not where it needed to be and it did not feel as if we were working as one organisation, all pulling in the same direction. The work with 4OC gave everyone the chance to have their say about Soho Housing and reflect on what was important and what to change.

4OC were great, they were flexible about how and when they met with everyone allowing maximum participation and seemed to understand the essence of Soho very quickly. This really helped us agree a vision and more importantly how we are going to work to achieve it.”

Barbara Brownlee, CEO

"... understood the essence of Soho very quickly"

The 4OC Magic

With the guidance of the staff and residents, 4OC co-designed the new vision and strategic direction for Soho Housing. It built on the strong connection it has to its communities, residents, and the provision of affordable housing and excellent services in the heart of London. In doing this it acknowledged the role that commercial lettings and activities play in facilitating this vision.

‘We support the unique communities that sustain diversity in the heart of London by providing affordable homes, commercial lettings, and excellent services for our residents’.

We agreed a set of Design Principles to embed the vision through its work and decisions – Resident and Community Catalyst; Know and be close to our residents and communities; Social and commercial together; and, Improve, innovate and be nimble

These principles helped to create a clear articulation of what working and living in the community will feel like. Into the future, they will continue to help to bind the organisation together and enable plans and activities to be aligned and purposeful.

Forward Thinking

Established in London in 1866, these days, Barnardo’s has its own Digital and Data team and an Innovation Hub helping to protect, support and nurture the most vulnerable children. Their approach to a Digital Needs strategy is ambitious and supported by a 36-month roadmap for change.

This plan covers implementation, skills development and partnering, all aligning with Barnardo’s vision and values.

Working together towards change

As part of the partnering process, 4OC conducted interviews and workshops to gain an understanding of current challenges within the organisation.

We engaged with the Executive team and Trustees, Directors, Heads of Service and Operations leaders. Our findings were incorporated into the roadmap.

As a trusted advisor, we worked closely with the Digital and Data team on the future ambition.

What happened next?

Two interconnected workstreams were put in place to deliver the strategy—Digital and Technology, and Data and Insight.

Since then, both workstreams have made great progress in helping Barnardo’s work digitally, particularly with children and young people. After 18 months of successful delivery, 4OC continues partnering with Barnardo’s as a critical friend. We support team development and commissioner reporting as well as provide programme and project management.

Nurture is in the nature of a good working relationship.

Thoughts from Barnardo’s

 

“The 4OC team have been a good partner for Barnardo’s, providing people who understand both the technical intricacies and the operational complexity our organisation faces.”

Leon Mayfield, Director of Business Services Solutions

“... people who understand both the technical intricacies and the operational complexity”

If you’d like to find out more about our approach to partnering, strategies and roadmapping, contact us on support@the4oc.com.

To find out what we do in Digital, please check out our work in the Digital space 

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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

This project was undertaken by a large multi-site acute Foundation Trust, which provides high-quality health care for a population of approximately 570,000 people in the South East of England.

The Trust had participated in a major review of county wide acute service reconfiguration options (the TCS review). The review recommended further work was completed to assess the feasibility of centralising essential services on one of the Trust’s three hospital sites, using existing buildings (Option 6).

Further feasibility work completed by the Trust had indicated that this option was not viable, but it proved difficult for the Trust, commissioners, local partner organisations and regulators at NHSI/E to agree the best way forward in terms of clinical strategy and service configuration, resulting in deadlock.

4OC were invited to come and work with the Trust and their partners to develop a viable clinical strategy, with stakeholder support, which:

  • Responded to the questions raised by the TCS review
  • Updated the ‘case for change’ included in the review, including activity and performance assumptions
  • Set out the Trust’s clinical strategy for the next three years, developed through discussion and collaboration with partners
£10 million of savings identified and delivered

The response

We put a small team in place, each of whom had Board level experience of managing acute trust finances, strategy and operations, together with ‘hands on’ experience of leading service reconfiguration projects.

A series of one-to-one discussions and small group meetings was held with CCG Commissioners, STP leads, NHSI, NHSE, Hampshire County Council colleagues, neighbouring Trusts and General Practitioners. The engagement process included Trust clinical leads and the Executive Team, and covered the following questions:

  • Current Trust strengths and areas for development
  • How the Trust’s services might best be configured to ensure the provision of high quality and sustainable clinical care
  • The activity, income, workforce, estates and quality assumptions included in the case for change, and whether these now required revision

The findings from the engagement process were used to review and update the Case for Change and to develop a clinical strategy for the Trust.

In summary, we delivered a comprehensive, focussed Clinical Strategy which included:

  • A summary of the strategic context and drivers for change
  • A review of the case for change
  • A summary of stakeholder views
  • A description of the Trust’s four clinical strategy objectives, together with year one action plans for delivery

The Strategy struck a balance between the strategic objectives and action plans required to ensure continued provision of safe, high quality care and the actions required to start the reconfiguration of services across the Trust’s three sites.

The outcome

Critically, the thorough stakeholder engagement process allowed for commissioner and partner concerns about clinical service delivery and future configuration to be identified and responded to by the Trust. The Trust recognised that the current service configuration was unsustainable. This was reflected in the clinical strategy document.

The recommendations were accepted by both the Trust Board and the wider health economy, and a shared whole system business case for capital development to support the delivery of this option is currently in development.  This partnership working is a significant move forwards for a system that was previously in ‘deadlock’.