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Through our Switch Housing programme, we are committed to sourcing safe and secure residential accommodation for vulnerable families across the UK.
By leveraging our track record of service excellence and hospitality expertise, we provide comprehensive property management and accommodation solutions to help meet the growing housing needs of local councils, whilst also offering high quality tenancy services for private residential landlords, who provide their properties for affordable housing.
We’re proud to work in partnership with councils, local authorities and landlords to help address the UK’s affordable housing shortage and enhance the quality of living for residents.
Here, find out more about our recent work with one London Council, and how we delivered valuable resident outreach to over 2,000 households within the council’s social housing programme.
In September 2024, we worked together with Lumensol and conducted a customer data collection project on behalf of a London Council. The aim of the project was to collect personal data for 2,500 households living in Temporary Accommodation and provide the council with an up-to-date status for all residents being housed in private rental properties.
Designed to capture current and accurate data, including any changes in circumstance - such as occupancy levels or employment status – the project helped to inform housing provision and services, and ensure that all accommodation is appropriate to the needs of the household.
It also provided assurance to private landlords, as part of Switch’s ongoing tenancy management services, that their properties were being properly overseen and managed.
Five team members from Switch Housing conducted the data collection calls over a period of six weeks.
The team followed a pre-set list of 12 questions, drafted in collaboration with the council. This questionnaire was designed to gather current data across a range of key criteria, including household occupancy, contact details and employment status.
Due to the nature of the project, a vital consideration was data protection. To ensure Switch adhered to all relevant protocols, we invested in data collection software in partnership with our IT company, the Switch team undertook additional GDPR training and certification, and all data captured as part of the project was fully GDPR compliant.
The six-week project was completed in September 2024 and provided valuable insights. Key findings included:
• 5% of households (50 properties) were unoccupied, meaning an end of duty for the council. This presents a potential saving of £1m each year in incentive and rental fees.
• 13% of households had a change in occupancy number, with 5% being underoccupied - presenting a potential council saving of £500,000 per year.
• 14% of households said they would move out of London if alternative accommodation could be sourced. This highlights the importance of engaging with landlords in wider areas across the UK, to help meet affordable housing needs and relieve pressure on in-demand boroughs.
• A scheme to re-locate 100 households out of London is now underway and this could generate an annual saving of £3m.
• 35% of households had legitimate concerns with their accommodation, which could then be raised and rectified with landlords.
• 400 client contact details were incorrect, raising key questions on the tenancy. The next step was to commission property visits for each one.
The project was commissioned by Lumensol who are a multi-disciplinary consultancy specialising in Social Housing, providing a range of services to Housing organisations and Local Authorities. These include Strategic guidance on areas of key service delivery such as Procurement, Commercial and Financial support, Data Analytics, redesigning internal resource teams and Operations, and delivery of comprehensive Asset Management activities such as Building Safety, Compliance and Decarbonisation funding & solutions.
Anna Benbow (Principal Consultant) said:
“The Switch team are true problem solvers. I met John and explained our challenges where the Council did not have an accurate record of our families that were being housed in private rental accommodation.
“John quickly provided a solution that allowed us to create the questions that we wanted the Switch team to ask. I was particularly impressed that John had his team who already look after vulnerable families in Birmingham make the calls along with the IT system that allowed us to protect the data and have real meaningful data that we could present in several ways.
I would happily recommend Switch to any other Local Authority with similar challenges and working together with them enables a holistic solution to be delivered.”
John Angus, Managing Director at Switch Management, said:
“Our work on this project is a prime example of our strong commitment to better serve the social housing sector in partnership with local councils and private residential landlords.
“This project provided vital data and insights to the client, which will enable them to continually review and adapt their social housing provision and deliver an affordable housing programme that is efficient, cost-effective and appropriate to the evolving needs of individual households.
“It’s also an example of the ongoing tenancy management services we provide to private landlords, giving them complete assurance that their properties are in safe hands, and creating an open dialogue with tenants to ensure all accommodation is good quality and compliant.”