In social housing, effective asset management is at the heart of delivering safe, sustainable, and affordable homes for communities. However, it’s easy for housing providers to find themselves stuck in a reactive maintenance cycle where urgent repairs and emergency call-outs understandably take priority, but then lead to inefficiencies and delays to planned works.
Emergency works are often more costly than scheduled preventative maintenance and can take a high proportion of both the budget and the human resource available. Long-term, this can cause issues with property standards down the line, as well as conflicting with sustainability goals.
The great news is that with the right strategy, an approach of active asset management can be implemented which has a positive impact in multiple areas. In this article, we explore what those benefits are and how housing associations and other social housing teams can build a proactive procurement strategy to reap the rewards and ensure compliance with the new requirements of the Procurement Act 2023.
Jump to:
- Why reactive procurement can hold organisations back
- The Benefits of Proactive Procurement in Social Housing
- Building a proactive procurement model
- How Procurement Hub can help
Why reactive procurement can hold organisations back
In the context of managing social housing assets, reactive procurement is the approach of only sourcing goods, works and services when an issue arises. An example of this is calling out a contractor to make an emergency repair to someone’s home. While emergency repairs will always be needed at times, approaching maintenance and repairs reactively all of the time has several drawbacks, which include:
- High costs: Emergency repairs often attract premium rates, with short-notice sourcing of a contractor meaning that you have no time to secure the most competitive prices for the work needed.
- Budget volatility: Unplanned costs can quickly blow through budgets, making it harder to plan for future investment.
- Operational strain: Teams are diverted from strategic priorities to deal with urgent issues.
- Short-term fixes: Urgent repairs often focus on making things safe or functional, rather than delivering long-lasting solutions.
- Disruption: Emergency works can be more disruptive for residents, affecting satisfaction and trust from the local community.
Reactive procurement, for the teams directly involved in making things happen, feels like constantly chasing your tail rather than taking a strategic approach to asset management.
The Benefits of Proactive Procurement in Social Housing
A proactive approach to asset management in social housing involves forecasting upcoming maintenance or replacement needs, planning investment, and using procurement to secure quality suppliers ahead of time. For housing associations, this can include everything from planned maintenance programmes, cyclical works (such as gas servicing or external decoration), to wider component replacement schedules (such as kitchens, bathrooms, windows, fencing or roofs).
The potential benefits of proactive procurement in this sector are significant. They include:
Predictable budgets
By planning works in advance, you can forecast costs more accurately. Engaging with suppliers early can also enable you to lock in competitive rates and avoid price spikes further down the line.
Reduced emergency repairs
Planned maintenance prevents many breakdowns from happening in the first place, reducing the reliance on costly out-of-hours contractors and meaning fewer delays to other work.
Extended asset lifespan
Routine maintenance and timely upgrades help properties, fixtures, and systems last longer, delaying the need for expensive replacements and shortening the lifecycle.
Improved safety and compliance
Regular maintenance and replacement cycles help to ensure that homes meet health and safety standards, minimising the risk of compliance breaches and resulting in safe homes for customers. In terms of the latest regulation under the Procurement Act 2023, there is now a requirement for organisations to ensure that they are accurate when publicising their procurement pipelines, so taking a proactive approach to understanding their assets and property management plans is key.
Environmental sustainability
Proactive investment means that you’re much better placed to specify energy-efficient and sustainable solutions in all areas of your asset management strategy, reducing carbon emissions and helping meet Net Zero targets.
Better customer experience
Well-maintained homes mean fewer disruptions for residents and wider communities, faster service when work is needed, and improved satisfaction scores.
Building a proactive procurement model
Transitioning from reactive to proactive procurement doesn’t happen overnight, but with a structured approach, housing providers can see rapid improvements in how they manage existing properties.
Step 1: Data-Driven Asset Management
An accurate asset register is essential. This should include the age, condition, and maintenance history of each property and their various components, enabling reliable forecasting for when replacements or upgrades will be needed.
Step 2: Long-Term Investment Planning
Using asset data, create multi-year investment programmes. For example, plan kitchen replacements every 20 years, external painting every 5–7 years, and boiler replacements every 12–15 years.
Step 3: Align Procurement with the Asset Plan
Once you know what works are coming up, align your procurement activity to secure suppliers in advance. This gives you opportunity to ensure you make the best contract award decisions for your specific circumstances and secure great suppliers that deliver on cost, sustainability and social value.
Step 4: Build Supplier Relationships
Long-term partnerships with suppliers encourage consistency, better communication, and improved performance. Suppliers who understand your stock and standards can deliver more efficiently.
Step 5: Monitor and Review
Regularly review supplier performance, costs, and customer feedback, measuring against tailored procurement KPIs. Use this data to refine your asset management plan and procurement strategy to ensure it’s still delivering great outcomes in all areas.
How Procurement Hub can help
Moving from a reactive strategy to a proactive approach to managing your social housing stock can be a real challenge, but the multiple benefits gained over the medium and long term make the transformation worth it.
At Procurement Hub, we are specialists in social housing, being part of Places for People,which is the UK’s largest social enterprise and owns or manages 245,000 homes in the UK. Along with our extensive range of solutions designed to assist all public sector organisations, we have specifically designed some to support housing associations to develop robust procurement strategies that deliver the safe homes that communities need to thrive. Our Property Works solution provides access to a wide range of pre-approved quality suppliers across all trades and regions, and also enables you to easily onboard incumbent suppliers that you wish to continue working with. Our Strategic Asset Management Framework can be used to help social housing providers understand their assets fully and develop an effective management plan to ensure regulatory compliance and best practice that delivers optimum results for communities, stakeholders and the public purse.
Get in touch to find out more.