This year’s funding round is now open (deadline 16th September 2019). We thought it would be useful to review applications from the last round and reflect on the local digital movement in homelessness services. It would be great to get a homelessness project funded so get in touch if you have an idea or are working on a relevant digital project.

Introducing the local digital movement

The government made a “digital pledge” in July 2018 to help councils transform their digital services in line with the Local Digital Declaration. This was backed by up to £7.5 million of government funding. The ambition is to co-create the conditions for the next generation of local public services with key principles including user-centred services, reduced dependence on inflexible technology and embedding an open culture.

Since the launch of the declaration, 169 councils have signed up (you can see if yours has here) and a team has been established at MHCLG to oversee the work. The first round of the Local Digital Fund allocated funding to 16 collaborative projects from 389 expressions of interest and 77 subsequent applications. 

This year’s funding round is now open with a deadline of 16th September 2019. We thought it would be useful to review applications from the last round and reflect on the movement’s implications for local homelessness services.

Local digital and homelessness

All expressions of interest and applications from the first round were tagged and published openly. Twelve EOIs were tagged with the “homelessness” theme and 6 full applications. One of these received funding - a project led by Adur & Worthing Councils that aims to bring joined-up, best-practice digital thinking to the challenging problem of local service directories (for homelessness and a wide range of services). Outputs from the first phase are openly available.

Other project ideas from the EOIs and applications include:

• digital measures to monitor whether existing and new affordable housing remains in use for its intended purpose
• digital services co-designed with homelessness clients (with built in automatic reminders, prompts, daily checks in etc.) to improve customer experience and support prevention
• a digital tool to capture key household data, establish the location of affordable accommodation and link the client to the accommodation directly. Could also offer guidance and support for households as they seek to find PRS accommodation
• use of council data to identify those at risk of homelessness early, and to develop an early intervention service that contacts those identified sensitively, understands their needs and refers them to online self-help or community support
• a self-service account to manage temporary accommodation rent; and
• a region-wide digital platform to support homelessness prevention

The bids represent an interesting mix of innovative uses of digital technology and “digitising” current manual processes. When reviewed with all bids, they also show local housing authorities are generally behind other local authority services in their use and exploitation of digital technology. This is also a common theme from our work to date. One hypothesis is that housing options services are often de-prioritised in corporate digital programmes, linked to incorrect perceptions of service users and their digital skills. This movement, the HRA and the prevention trailblazers are changing this and we plan to write future blogs about emerging and established practice in this area.

Bid, bid, bid

It would be great to see a project for local housing authorities receive funding. There have been some slight updates on how to apply for this round and you need at least 3 partner local authorities that have signed the local digital declaration in any bid. If you have an idea that you would like to take forward, there are various channels and networks provided by the Local Digital Collaboration Unit (LDCU) to help you attract potential partners. We would also be happy to have a chat and link you in with other authorities. Just get in touch.

We would also like to hear from any of the local authorities that submitted projects for the first round and see if/ how these have progressed. Even without funding, the principles of the fund around working openly and collaborating are things we are very keen to support. We are currently developing a good practice library (blog forthcoming) and want to make sure the role of digital technology in a housing options service is effectively captured to share and learn.