Housing Options IT System

City of Bradford Metropolitan District Council (the Council) is one of the largest Metropolitan Councils in the country and covers a wide area including the towns of Bingley, Ilkley, Keighley and Shipley.

The Council is seeking to appoint a suitably experienced and qualified Provider to deliver a Housing Allocations, Housing Options and Housing Related Support fully integrated case management system (the System).
The System will be used by different teams within the Council and external stakeholders such as Registered Providers and Support Providers.
The Council’s Housing Options Service (HOS) delivers statutory functions pertinent to advising customers in housing need, assisting to find suitable accommodation or accommodation with support and discharging these duties in the Social Housing and Private Rented Sector. The Housing Options Service currently use 3 separate systems to deliver these functions and the Council is seeking to replace these systems with one fully integrated solution with additional capabilities such as customer self-registration and account management, single unique customer case account across all systems, smart customer search engine, end-to-end case milestone alerts and notifications to users, document storage and template letters.

The Council is seeking a single IT supplier to provide a Housing IT System capable of delivering the following fully integrated functionalities:
• Housing Allocations – A housing register that delivers the Council’s Social Housing Allocations Policy and manages nominations from Registered Providers
• Housing Options & Homelessness - Housing Advice and Homelessness case management IT system
• Housing Related Support - delivery of the Gateway to Housing Related Support by allowing the Council to coordinate, prioritise and monitor the allocation of Housing Related Support.

During 2016/17, over 20000 customers registered on the Council’s Housing Allocations System. In the same period, the Housing Options Service assessed over 8000 customers who were in housing need and over 30% were placed in supported accommodation via the Gateway system.

The Council is working with a number of accommodation and support providers to meet customers’ needs. Information sharing across the IT System is critical to daily operations. However, it must be done securely without adding barriers and limiting effective and efficient service delivery.