Charity to produce sector-wide data standards

The initiative, featuring at least 10 housing associations, is intended to foreshadow the creation of common data standards that can be used across the sector.

HACT says creating common standards could help bring down costs associated with systems integration, particularly for organisations going through mergers.

The standard is expected to cover data to do with housing associations’ tenants and property. It comes after a HACT-commissioned study last year found that homes claiming no housing benefit had significantly lower responsive repairs costs, saving landlords up to £342 per tenancy.

Speaking to Inside Housing about the report, HACT chief executive Andrew van Doorn said it showed that the housing association sector “could and should get our data in a much better position”.

Launching the programme this week, Mr van Doorn added: “Many housing providers are currently struggling to fully realise the benefits of data analytics in their business – the sector suffers from messy and unstructured data and data systems, which make solving these issues prohibitively expensive.

“It’s time to stop talking about ‘bad data’ and develop a sector-wide solution to these challenges – a co-designed open source shared data standard for UK housing.”

At least 10 landlords are already taking part in the project – including Bromford, Catalyst and Orbit – with others yet to confirm their participation.

Gareth Davies, head of ICT at Linc-Cymru Housing, another organisation taking part in the project, said: “A new data standard for the sector has the potential to change how the sector works with data systems, enabling more efficient development and opening the market to innovation. Its introduction is a long overdue step forward for housing providers.”

The project started this month, with HACT hoping to publish a first version of the standards later this year, drawing on a similar exercise carried out in Holland.