Milton Keynes Council Optimises Housing Repairs with Strategic Review from Local Partnerships

Local Partnerships worked with Milton Keynes Council to optimise its £165m housing repairs and maintenance programme, benefiting over 11,000 households.

Local Partnerships provided strategic support by developing a delivery plan, conducting an options appraisal for future operating models, and improving key processes such as void property management. Our efforts helped the Council reduce turnaround times, eliminate backlogs and position the programme for long-term success.

The challenge:

Milton Keynes Council contracted private sector partners to deliver its housing repairs and maintenance programme.  This £165m planned maintenance programme delivered improvements benefitting 11,118 tenant households, 1,618 leasehold households, and 953 shared ownership households.

As with many such programmes, both insourced and outsourced, there was considerable pressure on the programme arising from a range of issues such as new regulatory requirements, financial pressures (such as cost increases), and an eagerness to invest in the energy efficiency of the stock. These pressures were in addition to the standard repairs and maintenance pressures.
With the contract drawing to a close, the Council also wanted an assessment of future operating models for the service.

The solution:

We assisted the Council with its repairs and maintenance programme in a number of ways. This included:

• Developing a delivery plan for the repairs and maintenance programme, which placed the R & M programme on a stronger, more strategic footing, by identifying key objectives and priorities for the service, as well as measures of success.

• Conducting a major options appraisal of future operating models for the service, including the benefits and risks of insourcing, reprocurement, or hybrid models, and making recommendations accordingly.

• Conducting process mapping and improvement exercises, such as for the time taken to relet void properties, and for leaseholders.

• Regular data analysis of KPIs including reviews of work in progress, identifying any relevant trends  and areas of concern (such as particular trades), and escalating accordingly.

• Assistance with benchmarking against other authorities facing similar challenges.

Lessons learned:

• The importance of ensuring that there is a clear strategic basis for decisions on prioritisation of investment in social housing stock, with objectives clearly understood and communicated – internally, to tenants, and to supply chains.

• The importance of robust assessments of all options for delivery of housing repairs and maintenance, including insourcing, outsourcing, and hybrid approaches.

• The importance of regularly reviewing key processes which may enable service improvements to be made, and efficiencies generated.

• The importance of active monitoring and management of KPIs, including assessments of work in progress to ensure that issues with specific trades are identified, and that longer delays in work are addressed.

• The importance of benchmarking performance with peers, on both a qualitative and quantitative basis.

The impact:

We assisted Milton Keynes Council on the delivery of its £165m repairs and maintenance contract which delivers responsive repairs, planned maintenance, and void repairs to its stock of around 11,000 homes. This included reviewing and improving the processes for the management of void properties and other key processes and appraising the future options for delivery of the repairs and maintenance contract, post 2024.

A new process and focus on the time taken for voids relets was instrumental in the reduction of turnaround times for voids.

Regular detailed analysis of work in progress enabled the identification of backlogs and blockages relating to particular trades, and through joint working with the private sector partners, WIP has been significantly reduced (and the longer backlogs eliminated).

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