Case Study:

London Borough of Redbridge

The London Borough of Redbridge sits in the North East of London and many people when asked have heard of it but have difficulty placing its exact location. It covers the areas of Ilford, Wanstead, Woodford and Hainault and is considered a green somewhat leafy borough.

Although a geographically large Borough, Redbridge has a small social housing stock of 7,100 properties of which 2,300 are leasehold with the remaining 4,800 tenanted. This makes up only 5% of the overall housing available in the borough and therefore makes it one of the smallest housing departments in London.

The Chief Housing Officer of Redbridge, Lisa Marston joined the authority in late 2003. Shortly after joining the Audit Commission carried out an inspection of the housing management service which resulted in a Zero Star rated service with promising prospects for improvement.

This placed Redbridge in the unenviable position of being the only authority in England that had two linked Zero Star services. This followed the re-inspection of the Repairs Service in September 2003 which scored the service as Zero Star service with Uncertain prospects for improvement.

The key messages coming out of the two inspections were as follows:

Housing Management:

• Poor value for money. The AC had recommended to Redbridge that they market test the repairs service   and were dissapointed with the lack of progress from their previous inspection.

Lisa Marston along with John Drew the Director of Adult Social Services and Housing embarked on an ambitious programme of change, recocognising that they would need external assistance in order to deliver.

Pinnacle were contacted and provided assistance in the following areas:

A senior consultant, Richard Berry, was engaged to develop a new style of repairs partnering contract that moved away from the traditional client contractor split, which had key elements of:

This project is now complete with the repairs partner Morrison having gone live in April 2006. In addition to the contract doccumentation Richard was responsible for the project management of the transition that included the transfer under TUPE of eighty six staff from the DLO.

Jon Kanareck was brought in in October 2004 to take on the interim role as Head of Housing Management. Jon's brief was to improve performance, develop and deliver a realistic but challanging improvement plan and to work with the management team and staff to change the culture/hearts and minds. The clear remit was to improve services to achieve a one star rating from the Audit Commission at the next inspection.

Mike Gammack joined Jon in April of 2005 to assist with delivering the improvement plan and Mike Luff in June 2005 to run the repairs hotline and manage the technical staff. At the start of the new repairs contract in April Mike and Mick moved over to the Asset Management Team to head up the clienting of the repairs contract.

As part of the modernisation of the housing service a new integrated housing management system was to be implemented. The Anite system was chosen following a competetive process with a project team being set up for delivering the change.

This was a complex project led by an in house team that met with a number of delays early on. Pinnacle were approached with a view to assisting in the project management at a senior level. Nick Wright and Andy Cook were brought in to assist and the first of the modules went live in April of this year.

Two inspections took place in September of 2005 one for Housing Management and one for Day-day Repairs. Both of the services were rated as "One Star" Promising prospects for improvement in March of this year.

Following Redbridge's stock option appraisal the tenants decision was to set up an ALMO. Redbridge is due to go live with the ALMO early in the new year with a new structure. Jon Kanareck, Mike Gammack, Mick Luff and Phil Batchelor (Part time Anite) will remain at Redbridge until the new senior structure for the ALMO is in place.

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