Since 1967, Platform Housing Group has put a strong focus on providing affordable, safe homes – serving over 120,000 people since forming. With 2,000 dedicated colleagues, COO Marion Duffy explains how Platform is building a truly modern, customer-focused HA that’s fit for the future.
Platform Housing Group, established in 1967, provides homes for more than 120,000 people across the Midlands – spanning from Herefordshire to the Lincolnshire coast, and from the Derbyshire Dales to the Cotswolds. The organisation manages approximately 50,000 homes and employs around 2,000 colleagues who deliver locally-focused housing services.
Their portfolio includes homes for social and affordable rent, shared ownership, supported housing, extra care schemes, and retirement living across the region.
‘A truly modern housing association’
In April 2021, Platform Housing Group launched a five-year corporate strategy aimed at becoming a truly modern housing association. This strategy built on the strengths of its legacy organisations and set out to create a unified entity capable of meeting the evolving needs of customers and communities.
Since then, the sector has faced ongoing external challenges including the fallout from Brexit, the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine, rising energy costs, inflation, and the impact of climate change. Alongside these pressures, new legislation and regulatory reforms have further shaped the organisation’s operations.
In early 2023, we identified five key priority areas to focus on for the remainder of the strategy period:
- Improving customer services, including a reduction in complaints, compensation and an increase in customer satisfaction;
- Investment in existing homes, including the move to EPC ‘C’ and carbon neutral targets;
- Compliance in relation to requirements from the Regulator of Social Housing and other legislative and statutory expectations;
- Completion of our transformation processes;
- Employee retention, engagement and wellbeing.
Commitment to wellbeing
At Platform Housing Group, we place a strong emphasis on supporting the wellbeing and engagement of customers and offer services including:
- Financial and employment advice
- Wellbeing and hardship funds
- Domestic abuse and safeguarding support
- Anti-social behaviour guidance
- Energy-saving and cost-of-living advice
- Winter warmth advice
We place customer voice at the centre of our operations, recognising that meaningful engagement is crucial for delivering the services residents expect and deserve. Customers play an active role in influencing and shaping services, helping the organisation identify what’s working well and where improvements can be made.
There are several ways for customers to get involved, including:
- Customer Voice Panel
- Complaints Reviewers
- Digital Champions
- Scrutiny Panel
- Community Representatives
- Co-Creation Groups
- Customer Sounding Board
- Estate Inspectors
These roles ensure that the diverse perspectives of our customer base are reflected in service delivery and future planning.
Community investment
We continue to invest in its communities through initiatives that deliver long-term social value. Our annual ‘Christmas Kindness’ campaign is a prime example, with the 2024 effort allocating £82,135 to grassroots projects and organisations that make a tangible difference in local lives. Highlights include:
Supporting Men’s Mental Health at Louth’s Men Shed
We supported Louth’s Men Shed in Lincolnshire, a safe and creative space where men can connect, combat isolation and improve their mental health. This initiative is vital in fostering a sense of belonging and purpose.
Remembering Through Art: The Skegness Poppy Installation
In collaboration with The Royal British Legion’s Skegness branch, we funded a poignant poppy installation. This project united the community in remembrance, honouring the service and sacrifice of our armed forces.
Providing shelter at St Paul’s Hostel in Worcester
Homelessness is one of society’s most pressing challenges and one that we are keen to tackle. St Paul’s offers safety, support and recovery for those facing homelessness, aligning with our mission of empowering communities. We have worked closely with St Paul’s Hostel over the years, most recently teaming up with Worcester Community Trust to organise a Big Stew event in the hostel’s kitchen.
Toys on the Table
In Leicestershire, we supported Toys on the Table, a charity ensuring children wake up to a gift on Christmas morning. This volunteer driven organisation brings festive cheer to families in need making the holidays brighter for thousands.
Feeding families at Ashbourne Food Bank
As the cost of living continues to rise, Ashbourne Food Bank continues to provide essential support to families. Through our campaign, we helped fund meals and Christmas gifts, offering a lifeline to those struggling during these challenging times.
Building hope at The Hub in Ross on Wye, Herefordshire
The Hub in Ross on Wye provides a safe space and essential services to vulnerable individuals. Our support ensures their work continues to inspire
and uplift the community, offering hope and practical assistance where it is
most needed.
Supporting vital community hubs, CAFLO in Birmingham
We provided crucial funding to the CAFLO Centre in Bromford and Hodge Hill, one of Birmingham’s most deprived areas. Run by Community Actions for Local Opportunities – or CAFLO – the centre offers a lifeline to local residents with activities ranging from sports and leisure to food banks and mental wellbeing services. This partnership aims to create a warm, safe space that meets the community’s needs, tackling unemployment and isolation while fostering a sense of togetherness.
Enhancing retirement living
Platform Housing Group has also invested in modernising its retirement living schemes. In 2024, Elizabeth Court Retirement Village in Lincolnshire underwent significant refurbishment to incorporate dementia-friendly and accessibility-enhancing design features – ranging from colour-coded floors and larger signage to automated doors and updated communal spaces.
Harling Court in Herefordshire similarly benefited from refreshed communal areas. In addition, 27 retirement sites have received upgraded alarm systems since April 2024, totaling a £1.2m investment to prepare for the national digital switchover. Each resident now has access to emergency pendants, with 24/7 monitoring and robust system back-up in place. Further alarm upgrades are also planned over the next 12 months.
Futureproofing our homes & services
Following the introduction of the Social Housing Act and resulting Consumer Standards, we have created a comprehensive action plan focused on the following priorities:
- Good quality data about all our homes;
- Robust health and safety assurance for our customers;
- Effective and timely repairs, maintenance and planned improvement services;
- Recognising diverse needs and tailoring services appropriately;
- Providing customers with information about landlord services and performance;
- Having a fair allocations service;
- Working with partners to deal effectively with anti social behaviour, hate crime, safeguarding and domestic abuse;
- Responding effectively to and learning from complaints.
The aim of the Act was to improve the provision and regulation of social housing.
Embracing digital innovation
At Platform Housing Group, we utilise both Microsoft Dynamics and a traditional integrated Housing Management System to report maintenance issues. Our customers can also log repairs directly via our self service portal on our website. Currently, we have an active project aimed at extending these self service facilities to include scheduling, changing and cancelling repair appointments.
This model – which is widely adopted by other housing associations – has proven to be the most effective and efficient method for reporting maintenance requests to landlords. This operating model reflects a reactive approach based on a traditional service paradigm characterised by a break fix relationship with the customer. However, we are witnessing the emergence of predictive and prescriptive repair capabilities powered by cloud computing, IoT and machine learning AI models.
The long standing reactive ‘break, fix, service’ paradigm is gradually being supplemented, augmented and enhanced by a pre-emptive approach that is driven by innovation and customer demand. For instance, modern digital technologies now enable the prediction of issues such as damp and mould, boiler failure, over occupancy or fuel poverty. This seismic shift provides service providers with the opportunity to transform established ways of working, benefitting customers while reallocating reactive maintenance budgets to major works and planned investments. Additionally, the traditional vendors operating across the maintenance lifecycle are being disrupted by new entrants, accelerating the rate of change and transformation within forward thinking organisations.
At Platform, we have been early pioneers in advanced data governance, data management principles, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA). Our work with AI and ML earned us the esteemed Housing Technology 2024 award, as well as being the winner at the Housing Innovation Awards 2024. This year we are finalists at the same conferences for further projects in this area. We are nominated for Best Digital Transformation, Best Digital Experience, Best Use of Data, Best Tec Partner and Most Innovative Approach to Tenant Communications. Our award entries highlight outstanding work in improving operations, repairs processing and repairs case management using Microsoft Dynamics and Power Platform. Over the past 12 months, the digitalisation and modernisation of our repairs logging and processing have delivered exceptional performance benefits across all key performance indicators, resulting in improved customer outcomes with customer satisfaction regularly exceeding targets.
Housing associations like ourselves are in a unique position to leverage the vast amounts of data we hold. With innovative thinking and a positive, adaptive culture, there is a real possibility of solving problems in a targeted and resource conscious manner. We have successfully used Machine Learning to identify customers at risk of becoming ‘silent’ and conducted hundreds of tenancy health checks, intervening where serious self neglect and isolation could have led to life threatening health issues. We have also deployed RPA to automate DWP Universal Credit checks and validations. Recently, we also used RPA to implement Data Observability principles, providing robust assurances checking future rent charges which are merged onto rent increase letters as part of the annual rent uplift.
Looking ahead
As we look to the future, our focus remains firmly on delivering great customer experiences, maintaining strong performance, and investing in our homes and communities. One of our core priorities is to achieve and sustain a customer satisfaction level of 75% or higher in our transactional surveys. We are also working to reduce the number of complaints that escalate to Final Review by improving the quality and timeliness of our responses from the outset.
We recognise the importance of digital services in making it easier for customers to interact with us. That’s why we are continuing to develop and improve our customer portal and mobile apps, ensuring they are user-friendly, efficient and accessible. Internally, we are investing in our people – every leader and manager across the Group will complete our in-house ‘Leading for Results’ programme. At the same time, we are embedding clear workforce planning across all teams to support our long-term growth and service delivery. A key ambition is for at least 70% of our colleagues to feel that our systems and processes genuinely support them in doing their jobs effectively.
Our commitment to investing in our homes is reflected in our plan to spend £171m over the next five years. Our development pipeline is structured to ensure sustainable growth, consisting of 40% land-led schemes, 50% strategic partnerships, and 10% Section 106 opportunities. We will continue to focus on providing efficient repairs and maintenance, aiming for an average response time of 12 days, underpinned by a robust gas replacement plan and guided by our Platform Standard design principles.
We’re also committed to creating a more sustainable future. All of our existing homes will achieve EPC ‘C’ ratings by 2030, and we aim to generate £12m in social value as part of our wider contribution to the communities we serve. Financial resilience is another key area – we are targeting ‘A’ rated credit status and top quartile bond trading, alongside achieving value for money efficiencies throughout the organisation. Supporting all of this is our plan to create a dedicated data warehouse, enabling better insight, decision-making and delivery across our services as we continue to implement our core change programme.
Article by Marion Duffy, chief operations officer at Platform Housing Group