South Lichfield: Putting Place into Practice

Place-based working flips the traditional model on its head, shifting our focus from organisational processes to the unique needs and strengths of the communities we serve. Instead of a one-size-fits-all approach, we're recognising that each place has its own distinct character, challenges, and opportunities.

Earlier this month we hosted our 4th place-based working webinar and were excited to introduce you to our second place-based prototype: South Lichfield. This pilot project, led by Helen Minchin, offers a fascinating glimpse into how place-based working can transform our relationships with customers and communities.

To watch the full webinar see below or continue reading for a full episode and Q&A breakdown:

A Diverse and Dynamic Place:

South Lichfield is a microcosm of diversity. While Lichfield itself is generally affluent, South Lichfield boasts a mix of older and newer homes, retirement living schemes, shared ownership properties, and even smaller villages within its boundaries. This diverse landscape presents unique challenges and opportunities for our team.

Building a Multi-Talented Team:

Recognising that a place-based approach requires a diverse skillset, the South Lichfield team is a unique blend of expertise. It includes neighbourhood coaches, a multi-skilled engineer, a planner, a retirement living manager, and even a representative from a women's refuge. This cross-functional team brings a holistic perspective to problem-solving and service delivery.

Empowerment from the Ground Up:

Before launching the pilot, the team was asked for their "wish list" for South Lichfield. This bottom-up approach empowered them to identify key priorities and shape the initiative's direction. Their ideas ranged from improving estate maintenance and supporting downsising to enhancing communication with contractors.

Integrating Retirement Living:

One of the key features of South Lichfield is the integration of the Beacon Park Village retirement community with the wider area. The village boasts a range of amenities, including a gym, restaurant, and craft rooms, intended for use by both residents and the wider community. This fosters social inclusion and reduces isolation.

Strengthening Communication:

Improved communication is a cornerstone of the South Lichfield pilot. Neighborhood coaches now have real-time updates on repairs, enabling them to provide better support to customers. The multi-skilled engineer benefits from reduced travel time and improved access to properties thanks to better communication with the coaches. A simple team chat ensures everyone is informed and connected.

Tackling Condensation, Damp, and Mould:

The team is taking a collaborative approach to tackling issues like condensation, damp, and mould. Joint visits by neighbourhood coaches and the engineer leverage their combined expertise to provide comprehensive solutions and improve the customer experience.

Challenges and Solutions:

The South Lichfield pilot hasn't been without its challenges. Postcode mapping issues initially led to some jobs being misassigned. The team is actively working to address this through improved technology and processes.

Measuring Success:

The success of the South Lichfield pilot is being measured through a combination of traditional metrics (e.g., complaints, job completion times) and qualitative measures (e.g., colleague surveys, customer satisfaction). The goal is to understand not only what works, but how it impacts the lives of our customers and communities.

Looking Ahead:

The South Lichfield pilot is an inspiring example of how place-based working can transform service delivery and community engagement. We're excited to continue learning from this pilot and apply those learnings to future place-based initiatives across Bromford. 

Our journey towards a more place-based, customer-centric organisation is just beginning. Stay tuned for more updates as we roll out this exciting new approach across Bromford.

Q&A breakdown

We received some fantastic questions during the Q&A session at the end of the webinar, but didn't get around to answering them all live. All of the questions that were asked have been sorted by topic and answered below:

Geography Related Questions:

• What’s within a neighbourhood coaches remit?

  Neighbourhood Coaches (or NC’s) deal with any tenancy related questions, as well as help you deal with any problems in your local area, or with your neighbours. Your neighbourhood coach is more than just someone who helps with housing though, they’re a partner in your community. They’re able to connect you with local services, groups, clubs, and organisations that can help you and your neighbours thrive. 

  More inforomation is available here: Bromford – NC role 

• How many homes are in South Lichfield?

  In the South Lichfield pilot area, there are just over 900 homes which covers 4 Neighbourhood Coach patches. 

• Is there a clear map available of the pilots coverage?

  A map of the locations inculded in the South Lichfield pilot can be seen as part of the presentation, which equates to roughly 900 Bromford homes.

  The map also shows 2 other places in Lichfield, covering the North and the East of the city.

• Is something similar due for North Lichfield? 

  Whilst we don’t currently have exact timescales for when place-based working will start in North Lichfield, Bromford are committed to this approach and North Lichfield will certainly be part of the plans for wider expansion in future.

• Was there a reason South Lichfield was chosen over other areas for the pilot? How did you map it out?

  We've used a mixed approach of data science and how customers & colleagues identify with a place. More information on the approach can be found here: Defining Places Webinar

  There are 4 pilot areas that have deliberately been chosen because they are different. Staple Hill (South Gloucestershire), South Lichfield (Lichfield), Moreton-in-Marsh (Cotswolds) and South Staffordshire DC. These 4 places are a mix of urban & rural, property types & dispersion and customer demographics because we want to learn what works in different types of places – this is not a one-size-fits-all approach. 

• Do you have place plans for each area?

  Place-based working is a bottom-up approach so no ”place plans” have been pre-defined for the pilot areas. The customers & colleagues who live & work there must establish these amongst themselves. 

Results & Reporting Questions:

• How are you monitoring outcomes? Any key metrics, KPI's or changes to measuring performance?

  Bromford have a mix of key metrics which have been agreed with our Executive team that we want to keep an eye on. These include more traditional things like repairs performance & complaints. However, because many of the benefits from place-based working are more than just numbers, we are also collecting qualitative data such as our Tenant Satisfaction Measures data and surveys with colleagues to understand how they feel about working in place pilots - does it reduce stress? Do they feel that they're more supported by their colleagues? These are valuable benefits as well. 

• What are the potential plans to roll out place-based working to a broader geography?

  It will be rolling out to the wider Bromford geography in the future – but the timescales are, as yet, unknown. It's very tempting for us to say this approach is yielding success in the first 2 pilots, so let’s roll it out across our whole geography now. But we've got to think about all of Bromford's variance, in the form of diverse homes and communities in order to get this right. We've already identified some teething issues and we really want to resolve them before we expand. 

• Has there been any decrease in complaints while this pilot has been live? Has the feedback from customers been positive so far?

  Complaints is one of the areas in which place-based working does appear to have positively influenced. The ability of teams to address customer issues more quickly and directly has ostensibly reduced formal complaints, even sometimes proactively before customers report them. More data must be collected by Bromford to fully prove this theory. 

Working Practice Questions:

• Are Bromford engineers saving money on petrol with place-based working?

  Place-based working does seem to have reduced the time our engineers spend travelling and therefore petrol & emissions.

• Is post code planning training being considered to solve the issue of engineers being taken out of their places for certain jobs?

  There’s plenty of learnings we are taking away from each pilot – they are controlled experiments after all! Training or systems requirements are definitely part of that learning. 

• Are there regular meetings held for customers?

  It's a bit different in each area, really. We carry out annual customer conversations, visiting them at least every year to check in with them and see how things are. So we've got some questions around community and the different way of working that we’ve included in those conversations. Questions such as “How do you feel about living in your community? How safe do you feel? What is it that you like about your community?”

  Within Franciscan View (an independent living scheme for older people) we ran a residence meeting that we hadn't had for a long, long time. 20-or-so customers turned out which was great and one of the things they shared with us, was they were concerned about their heating. So we brought along a colleague that works in our gas team and he could talk to the customers directly about the issues they were having. The result was an engineer on site for a whole day talking to customers, going around to each homes to really get the underlying issue of what's going on with those boilers and we can look at it more holistically. 

  We need to understand each kind of community and then see what we can do to support them. 

• How have you tackled information sharing between professionals?

  Part of place-based working is about reducing the friction of information sharing by bringing Bromford colleagues from around the business together into one coherent team. We know that one of the biggest frustrations for our customers when they contact us is being passed from team to team, and Bromford teams not communicating effectively when responding. 

   The place-based team are able to communicate much more easily with each other, and by having a nominated colleague from supporting teams that are personally responsible for fielding any specialist queries there is a greater sense of individual responsibility amongst colleagues. 

• How are you tailoring support for the shared owners/homeowners within place?

  Shared owners will be an important customer demographic in a lot of our places. We are in the early stages of place-based working, but a future vision is for a flexible “home pathway” to be developed to support customers. This will be different for individual customers, but there is potential to support customers from social rented accommodation into shared ownership, stair-casing and home ownership, as per their aspirations. 

External Partnership Questions:

• Would there be opportunities for local suppliers to get involved and support in community initiatives? 

  We'd really welcome any ideas, anything around the community that helps it get better served. One of the contractors that we deal with at the moment have a Community Value Fund and we're actively exploring opportunities to use that funding to support our customer at Franciscan View to improve a small outdoor space that the customers could use if it suited them better. We're open to any approaches – please contact helen.minchin@bromford.co.uk 

• Is there a way that other agencies might be able to engage with this process? For example to raise awareness of issues that might have otherwise been identified through local intelligence, but not necessarily have been raised by the community?  (e.g. tackling a localised preventable health)

  This is absolutely something we see as a benefit from engaging with other local businesses, charities, statutory bodies and others. need not conflict directly with other external data. 

  External intelligence on localised health issues, for example, can inform you what can be improved, but the deployment of the solution should be a community led, bottom-up approach. Developing the solution in partnership with local residents and other stakeholders improves the effectiveness of that solution by accounting for the different strengths and needs of individual communities. 

• What has happened in regards to walkabouts with Councillors in their Wards?

  This is absolutely something we would like to do. Place Team leader Helen Minchin said: 

  “I'd really welcome some walkabouts, and that's on my to do list to sort out. I predominantly have always worked in North Lichfield, so I don't know some of the councillors in the South that well. So I'd really welcome a get together afterwards to organise that because I'd really welcome their thoughts about the community as well.”