South Tyneside Homes gains full viability status on housing stock
South Tyneside Council’s Housing Company, South Tyneside Homes, has implemented a new cloud hosted stock assessment tool from PIMSS Data Systems to identify the financial and sustainability impacts of their Decent Homes investments made since 2010.
The new tool, called Viability, enables South Tyneside Homes to analyse housing and associated stock performance against financial (NPV), socio-economic and sustainability criteria and then make informed investment decisions, including the retention, remodelling or removal of assets, against its portfolio of 17,500 homes.
South Tyneside Homes is an arms length management organisation (ALMO) created by South Tyneside Council in 2004 to manage, maintain and improve its council homes and estates. It is a non-profit-making company that is 100 per cent owned by South Tyneside Council.
Viability now provides South Tyneside Homes with the full picture of stock performance over time and informs the organisation’s forward plans of required action. It is able to map all forms of data and allows for the comparison of stock performance across areas or time with the ability to proactively model the impact of any planned activities.
Replacing a spreadsheet system, Viability fully integrates with the PIMSS Asset Management software, which South Tyneside Homes has been using for the last 14 years, offering the organisation a holistic view of its housing assets.
Initially purchased for the Asset Management Team, South Tyneside Homes will now extend the implementation of Viability to the Empty Homes and Repairs Team plus the Sustainability Working Group, with a commitment to fully integrate this to other teams within its remit.
Simon Mercer, Asset Manager at South Tyneside Homes comments: “We can use as little or as much data as we need depending on what we want to analyse, and all factors can be weighted equally – or not – depending on the situation. We can evaluate stock in any given grouping at any given time, compare stock across different areas at the same time and compare stock performance over time. So Viability really has added enormous value to our housing stock portfolio and we can now proactively plan ahead.”
Martin McDonnell, Managing Director at PIMSS Data Systems comments: “We already have a long working relationship with South Tyneside Homes and they have contributed significantly towards helping us enhance the functionality of our new Viability assessment tool for which we are extremely grateful. We are delighted that they are realising such significant benefits from the system and that we are playing an important role in helping them to provide great homes in the South Tyneside region.”
