UK Housing Data Standards

Why are they so important for the sector

Developed by the sector, for the sector – The UK Housing Data Standards aim to support the housing sector to improve its data and overcome current challenges by increasing data governance, improving performance and streamlining regulatory reporting in social housing.

Individually, housing providers can use the Standard to inform transformation programmes including in designing new processes and creating interfaces between systems, contractors, and customers.

Data standards are the overarching principles of a data architecture which enables us to uniformly describe data components and processes.

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Implementation and adoption

All modules of the UK Housing Data Standards are free to download alongside further details on HACT’s digital platform. You can register for your free account here.

The standards have been downloaded over 2,000 times by social housing organisations across the UK and continue to do so daily. However, the next step for the sector is to increase wider implementation. There are various ways to do this, from standardising specific or new data sets from one module in shorter-term sprints in a matter of months to longer-term implementation plans that formalise objectives to adopt the entire data model over 3-5 year strategies.

The documentation that accompanies the standards gives foundational guidance on how and where to start; HACT can also work with social housing organisations to create, support or deliver implementation.

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Business benefits

The ability to bring together data on tenants or assets quickly and easily across multiple systems and use it to drive more effective business decisions.
Greater freedom to move between and integrate technology platforms.
Enable more effective data sharing with other public services and participate in the growing policy interest in this space.
Generate better and more bespoke comparative performance and cost insights.
Faster introduction of connected home/IoT technologies.
Reduce costs around service sharing, stock rationalisation and mergers by providing more reliable insights and information.

Download the individual standards

The full model is made up of 10 individual modules with the following components:

> Quick start guide

> Reference data model

> Data exchange standards

> Implementation business case

Care and Support

Customer data

Development handover

Income and service charges

Planned maintenance

Reactive repairs

Resident feedback and customer complaints

Voids

Environmental

Regulatory returns

Want to download the Standards in full?

Dowload all standards modules

“We have been able to leverage our participation to shorten development cycles for our own change and transformation projects in the confidence that the underlying data model is comprehensive and flexible enough to support both current and future ways of working. This gives an unprecedented level of ‘future-proofing’. We are convinced that the standards are facilitating our drive to deliver housing and services better, faster and at a lower cost.”

David Harrison, Head of Data

L & Q

Common questions

Once you have downloaded the standards, there are normally a raft of questions that come with wanting to get going, including ‘Where do I start?”.

To help you on your way to implementing the standards across your organisation, we’ve compiled a few of the most commonly questions below.

As a sector we have lots of different areas of data that sit on various systems, how would we approach implementing the standards against this landscape

The UK Housing Data Standards provide a data model that helps build a single source of your organisation’s truth. These can feed into multiple software provisions to provide the fields and definitions within these to ensure consistency and better enterprise wide uses and integration of data. Other organisations benefit from using the common data model as the basis for a single integrated CRM, housing, repairs and asset solution.

How could structural safety be captured by the UK Housing Data Standards?

The work that was created as part of the Development Handover module from the UK Housing Data Standards underpins much of the golden thread of building data that makes up legislative requirements on social housing organisations as part of the Building Safety Act. Many of the approaches to managing the granular buildings data that makes up the golden thread such as BIM and iso19650 have been shown to be interoperable with the UK Housing Data Standards model.

How will these standard provide a shield against cyber attacks and data leaks please

Data Standards enable better and stricter data governance through viewing and managing source data is a clearer and more transparent manner. Having shared definitions across your organisational data allows auditing and informational security to be applied in a consistent way. The process maps that sit alongside the data model can also provide better understanding of the data processes and exchanges were data leaks could potentially happen and be proactively supported.

What are the biggest barriers to implementation – what would you suggest would be the best steps to overcome these?

The main challenges that social housing organisations have highlighted in implementing UK Housing Data Standards are staff resources, organisational culture and knowing what foundational steps to take in doing so. In order to build the skills and capabilities around this, please check out our digital platform on Mindset.AI (hact.org.uk) or get in touch with Michael michael.mclaughlin@hact.org.uk

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Data Self assessment tool

Understand your organisation’s readiness to become data-driven

Accessed via HACT’s online platform’s digital channel, the free tool takes you through a series of simple questions so you can gain an understanding of your organisation’s current use, management and level of control and provides a personal action plan to transform and optimise your use of data.

The questions and action plan focus on the key areas of; Strategy, culture, process, systems, customers and assurance.

Find out more and access the tool

Watch & listen again

UK Housing Data Standards V3.5 launch event

Watch and listen again to the launch event for the completed Version 3.5 of the UK Housing Data Standards that include our Environmental Data Model to help play a foundational role when providing processes and evidence to underpin the sector’s journey to net zero. Version 3.5 also includes new modules on regulatory returns and BIM4HAs toolkit and this session will introduce the new content this provides and the foundational steps you can take to implement these across your organisation.

Implementing the UK Housing Data Standards

HACT Managing Director, Jacqui Bateson, and Digital Lead, Michael McLaughlin, discuss the importance of the UK Housing Data Standards and how to implement them across your organisation.

Understanding the golden thread of building safety data – HSE and DLUHC

Neil Hope-Collins of HSE, Jonathan Zokay of DLUHC discuss the importance of the Golden Thread of data, and the potential impact that the forthcoming secondary legislation will have on social housing organisations. They also look at DLUHC’s current consultation and some of the key areas that your social housing organisation may wish to look out for within these.

Understanding the golden thread of building safety data – NHG

Jake Le-Page, Head of Regulation at Notting Hill Genesis, unpicks some of the key challenges that organisations, such as Notting Hill Genesis, have in regards to getting their building safety data right, and the foundational steps that can be taken now.

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