LOCARLA is a new system we have been working on which totally changes the way we deliver information to our clients. Built around our core data sets – ‘Companies, People & Contracts’, LOCARLA can be loosely described as a ‘populated CRM’ for the Housing sector.

Since 1997 we have been delivering data predominantly related to housing,  but with the addition of Contract and Business Intelligence data we now cover Housing, Education, Health, Commercial, Government & Garages/Parking – hence, we are also changing our name.

We are not removing anything that currently appears on Housingnet. We have just figured out a way of displaying it in a more user friendly way.

This new system will also enable us to deliver an API service allowing clients to connect our data to their software, such as Salesforce or MS Dynamics. The code we have used to build LOCARLA and its design allows us the flexibility to bolt on other functionality including CRM and Bid Management tools.

The LOCARLA system is based around a central ‘spreadsheet’ of records which can be filtered and then saved. Panels of data are used to explore more detailed information on each housing association, local authority, contractor and supplier.

Active Premium Users can view the LOCARLA project here if you are signed in to Housingnet.

 

 

Each ‘Company Name’ is linked to the side panel where we display information relating to each organisation including; Housing, Finance, Contracts, Stock & Contract Mapping.

 

 

The tables can be organised by adding and removing data columns and by changing the order of the columns by drag and drop in the Edit Table window.

 

 

To filter the table records select the data you want to include from the filter options menu. Checking each box will remove all other records and every search can be saved.

Example searches:
Companies – Housing Associations in Bedfordshire with over 5000 units in management that have Central Heating contracts due to expire next year.

Contracts Table – New tenders in the Housing Sector relating to roofing contracts in the South West of England.

 

 

Every saved Contract search builds a Dashboard giving you easy access to an overview of relevant information and the ability to see what your colleagues are working on.

 

 

Housingnet is not going anywhere for a while. We will be running both sites in tandem until all the content has been moved across and the functionality completed.

Premium clients can already access parts of LOCARLA  and we aim to have our Commercial and ‘double opt-in’ Free users using the new system by Manchester.

For a single user our Premium Licence to access all our services is £4950 as an annual cost with additional user licences available for £380 pa. You can also pay monthly by direct debit for £475.

The Commercial Licence for ‘Company’ and ‘People’ data which includes stock mapping and development data costs £1150 for a single user and £50 for each additional user. Currently the online price for the Commercial is £950 and includes 5 users so if you fancy a bargin buy your licence before the price goes up.

VAT excluded.

If you would like an on-line demo or a chat about how we can save your company time, money and steal a march on the competition, please get in touch:

Email us at hello@locarla.com or call 0208 772 6426

We will be in Manchester from Monday to Thursday afternoon. We have a house by the canal (10 minute walk) and would be excited to show you what LOCARLA can do. Please get in touch if you are interested in joining a session.

 

 

Tender Alert Service

Where we differ from other Tender & Contract portals is although we Hoover up 100s of public sector tenders everyday we concentrate on the ‘Built Environment’.  We strip each tender of information as we add them to Housingnet. Our clients save time by relying on us to find the relevant Tenders for them based on the selections they have made. We have been benchmarked against Tenders Direct, B2B and Contracts Advance and we are first out with the Tenders and don’t miss any so you can feel confident that you’re seeing every opportunity.

Daily Tenders are sent to clients by email – view an example here and can be accessed through our Business Intelligence On-Demand service or the Current Tenders table.

We check the scope and description of each tender and assign primary and secondary ‘Trades’ rather than use CPV codes as we find them inaccurate. Organising tenders in this way means we can show clients tenders that might be of interest even when they don’t appear so at first glance.

 

Expiring Contracts & Pipeline Analysis

Our clients want to know when a contract is due to expire, who is currently doing the work, how is the contractor performing and if the contract was extended or looks like it will be extended.
If there is no Contract Award Notice published, which happens a lot, we do the research so we can still answer their questions.

We have an Expiring Contracts table where you can select to view contracts expiring within a time frame that match your areas of interest.
Every Housing Association and Local Authority has a page which lists all the contractors and suppliers working for them along with the contract details.
As well as our Current Tender table, Contract Award table and Expiring Contracts there is a master contract database with over 100,000 tenders, Awards and PIN notices which can be searched in multiple ways for research purposes.

 

 

We also produce Pipeline Analysis reports for each region which detail:

• Contracts Expiring with 1,3 and 5 year time frames
• Market Share Analysis
• Average Maintenance costs
• Clients in the region procuring services
• Contractors winning the work in the previous 1, 3 and 5 years

 

 

Contracts by Organisation

Every Housing Association and Local Authority has a page of information listing current and recent Tenders, all live current contracts (that we know about) and any Frameworks they are running or are involved in. You can see a live example page here.

 

 

Frameworks

Frameworks are just as important to us as standard contracts but they are harder to deal with. We split them up to show you which HA/LA specific Frameworks the organisations have and which Consortium Frameworks they are signed up to.

When we can confirm which contractors have been called off the Framework we move it in to the ‘Current Contracts’ section so it can be clearly seen who is doing what for whom.

You can view an example of the Framework tables at the bottom of the linked page.

 

Minutes

Minutes also form part of our Tender Alert Service and ‘BIOD‘ and give early insight to upcoming tenders, problems with contracts, new build spending and planning and any other interesting information we can find. We look at all Local Authority (and Housing Association where available) Minutes and select any paragraphs that we think may be of some interest to our clients. You select what areas and topics you want to be shown.

 

Company / Competitor Search

Housingnet is a resource of information and a very big one at that. We listen to our clients requests and build the software tools and functionality they ask for.

The Company / Competitor database can be searched by company name or keyword. If you’re looking at a competitor then we will show you every instance of that company name appearing in a High or Low Contract, a Local Authority Contract Register or on an Expenditure sheet. You can also do the same with keywords such as ‘new build’, ‘ground source heat pump’, or ‘DHS’.

The Company / Competitor Search forms part of the Data Bank.

Click here for a video on the Company / Competitor Search

 

Finance

Financial Return data is added for the largest 400 Housing Associations and their subsidiaries. The Global Accounts data is added for any remaining HAs when it is released.

 

Analysis

We use multiple metrics relating to Repairs & Maintenance to enable our clients to get a complete overview of each organisation.

The metrics can be matched to a timeline of data to understand any peaks or troughs in the graphs.

 

Housing Stock

Our mapping projects are extensive and we have been working on them since 2007. We map all Social Housing Stock in the UK using Land Registry Data that we have spent years cleaning.

Click here to read our Universal Map Blog.

Click here to view an unlocked ‘Housing’ page to see what other housing data we collect.

 

New Business : Stock Overlay

‘New Business’ is an example of what happens when a client asks us to carry out a certain task. The task was

1.  To show the stock they were currently contracted to work on.
2.  Include their office locations and add makers to show contracts that they were working on
3. Select up to 3 Housing Associations and plot their housing stock
4. And lastly, to overlay that with store locations from a number of different building material suppliers

 

 

For a list of features of the Housingnet Premium Licence go here or view the Help file for more screen shots and information.

Please get in touch for a demo either online or in your office or just to ask a question.

 

 

Mapping Brownfield Sites

The Strategic Housing Register forms part of the Local Plan and details all areas that could be potential, or actual, sites for housing development. Prior to this release the most recent data was from 2011. We have plotted 7874 sites from 164 Local Authorities on to our Universal Map with further details opening in the left panel on clicking the map marker.

 

 

Land Registry Titles

We worked with Land Registry in the initial release of the Corporate Data Set of Titles. The problem with Social stock was that most of it had never been sold so the original title was submitted to the old paper system. This meant that we had to clean the data to deal with spelling mistakes of owner names, name changes, stock transfers and titles that had not been updated or submitted incorrectly. The master database contains 12.7 M titles and we use this information to plot stock on the maps but it is also useful when tracking owners of sites both public and commercial.

 

Planning Applications

Everything we do we do in detail. We’re not just feeding records in to the system, we strip them of data first so we can monitor and measure more effectively. We collect Planning Applications for the largest 10 cities in the UK looking specifically for Residential New Build, Conversions and Office to Residential applications. We’re happy to collect applications from other areas on request.

As we look at each application in detail we are able to build very accurate reports on the data we collect and compile these in to tables and carry out further analysis depending on the tasks we are set by our clients.

 

Delivering Accurate Tenders, Contract Awards & Pipeline Data

Where we differ from other Tender & Contract portals is although we Hoover up 100s of public sector tenders everyday we concentrate on the ‘Built Environment’ and strip them of information as they are added to Housingnet. Our clients save time by relying on us to find the relevant Tenders for them based on the selections they have made. We have been benchmarked against Tenders Direct, B2B and Contracts Advance and we are first out with the Tenders and never miss any. Daily Tenders are sent to clients by email – view an example here and can be accessed through our Business Intelligence On-Demand service.

 

 

Minutes

Minutes also form part of ‘BIOD’ and give early insight to upcoming tenders, problems with contracts, new build spending and planning and any other interesting information we can find. We look at all Local Authority (and Housing Association where available) Minutes and select any paragraphs that we think may be of some interest to our clients. You select what areas and topics you want to be shown.

 

 

Data Collection

There is no secret to how we collect data, the office is split in to data teams covering Contracts, News, Reports and Finance and this development and pipeline data is stripped out of Annual Reports, the Statistical Data Return, News and from the organisations website and literature. View a sample of the data.
 

 

Mapped Stock

Read the Blog post on our Universal Map project which uses multiple data sets to map UK Social Housing and Contract information.

 

League Tables & Market Share Analysis

Looking at the data in detail enables us to produce accurate analysis on the contractors and clients working in the sector.

 

The Data Bank

We produce dynamic sheets of data that update in real time as we add new information. The sheets are used for benchmarking, finding ‘best fit’ target clients and competitor analysis.

We offer free access to parts of Housingnet to Housing Association and Local Authority employees and sell two types of commercial licenses. Click here to learn more about what we provide and please get in touch if you think we can help or have any questions to ask.
 

A quick round-up of Housingnet activity over the past month.

Banners again

I bang on all the time about banners and I don’t really get why some people don’t send them in. We are now also showing your banners on Housingnet to our HA & LA users – over 2000 have subscribed so far. On average each banner was being shown 455 times last month on the website alone.
The banner dimensions for web and mobile are:
660 x 150px
300 x 250px

They look like this on Housingnet News

 

 

Universal Map

Universal Map – New Business This has been awhile coming but it’s finally launched. ‘New Business’ is a new section on the Universal Map which enables clients to display the stock they are contracted to work on shown as a heatmap and then the ability to add the stock markers of up to 3 further Housing Organisations so you can see if you are already working in their area. You can then overlay this data with store locations of the main materials suppliers such as Jewson and Travis Perkins.

But let’s start with something simpler, a client asked this yesterday …..

“I need a map of a prospective clients stock and want to show our office locations“

Open the map

Select ‘New Business’

 

Open Select Contractor and search for your company. – This will load the map with the stock owned by the organisations you work with and the contracts we have you working on.

You can turn off ‘Contract Markers’ and ‘Heatmap in the Select Map Feature section.

Now search for up to 3 organisations to display their stock on the map.

If we don’t have all your area offices please send them.

View a Blog on all the Universal Map features here.

 

Tender Alert Email

You hopefully noticed that we started sending out the daily tenders by email again today. We want you to use BIOD as this is a better system but realise that some of you are still using Tenders Direct and we need to stop this as it’s wasted money.

The new ‘Bulletin’ has Tenders, CANs, Minutes and News and although this week we are sending everything out each day we are moving our email server so we can send information based on your settings in the very near future.

 

 

Search

You might have noticed we have changed the search results section so you can link to the relevant page quicker. The ‘Name’ will take you to the ‘Overview’ and the icons open ‘Housing, Finance, Stock Map, News, Tenders & Contracts, Analysis Graphs and the PrintOut.

 

League Tables

View League Tables

 

Planning Stats – Top 10 Cities

Download the full table

The Universal Map combines our Housing and Contracts Map so we can create a one stop shop for all our mapping projects. It also includes new functionality and data that you won’t have seen before. Excited? I bet you are. We’ve added screen shots below to walk you through it.

The Universal Map can be accessed if you are a Premium client or a Free HA / LA user and you have opt-ed in to our GDPR request. If you have a free registration but can’t view the map you can change your opt-in settings from the Dashboard.

We also made an excruciatingly dull ‘How to’ video to give you an overview of the map features but since then we added the ‘New Business’ section so we’ll update it soon.

 

Mapping Brownfield Sites

The Strategic Housing Register forms part of the Local Plan and details all areas that could be potential, or actual, sites for housing development.  Further details on each site open in the left panel on clicking the map marker.

 

Mapping Housing Stock

Mapped Land Registry Title Data for Social Housing in England & Wales. Select anywhere on the map to zoom in to the Ward to display all stock. Show the stock by Ward, 1 & 5 mile radius or Local Authority.

 

Highlighting Stock

In the left panel select the figure in the Ward column to highlight the stock owned by the corresponding organisation. All other markers owned by other organisations will change to grey

 

Property Data Details

Click a purple stock marker to view the Street View, property information and EPC details (where available).

 

Show Organisations based on Name or Location

Search for an organisations name or an area at the top of the panel to display to display results on the map. For Location search click on the marker to load the Land Registry Title Data.

 

Selected Organisations

When an individual organisation is selected the stock markers displayed will be colour coded to represent the type of Title as shown in the Legend.

Organisation data in the left panel includes Address, Parent / Subsidiary info, Housing Stock overview and key metric graphs.

 

Search Contracts

Search contracts based on the type of work which we break down into ‘Trades’. Contracts are displayed in a ‘traffic light’ colour scheme relating to their expiry date.

 

Search Contracts Options

Contracts can be displayed based on Expiry, Satisfaction Ratings or by Contract Winner.

 

Select Contractor

Search for a Contractor to show office locations and the contracts they are involved in.

 

Selected Contract Details

Hover over the contract marker for an overview of the contract details and click to view the Contract Award Notice and display the related housing stock.

 

New Business

In this example Liberty Group clients stock is shown as a heat map

 

New Business : Stock Overlay

You can overlay the heatmap with stock markers from up to 3 target clients – Great Places has been selected as an example

 

New Business : Merchant Store Locations

 

Flood Alert and Green Belt

View properties in Green Belt and Flood Plain areas.

 

As always get in touch if you get stuck.

Our Premium Tender Alert and News Service is called Business Intelligence On-Demand and works particularly well on mobiles. This is how you access it …..

Open www.housingnet.co.uk on your mobile phone.

To add a Housingnet icon to your Home Screen read this:
https://www.howtogeek.com/196087/how-to-add-websites-to-the-home-screen-on-any-smartphone-or-tablet/

Sign in from the Menu. The Menu icon will change from green to white. BIOD is the landing page where we include Daily Tenders, Contract Award Notices, Minutes & a daily News roundup.

 

The mobile version of BIOD will show the same information you have set up on the desktop.

 

You can also change the settings by clicking on the green settings icon.

 

The same for Contract Award Notices

 

Minutes are included and you can change the settings to only see Minutes from your areas of interest and the Type of content.

 

People really like our news service and we go the extra mile with Construction & Maintenance and Planning & Regeneration. Again, just remove the news topics you don’t want to see from the settings.

 

Click on any Housing Association or Local Authority listed in the contract data to view their details.

 

We’re here if you need a hand.

Welcome to the August edition of the Housingnet Update.

 

Stop buying Tenders Direct (or any other tender service)!

If you still have a Tenders Direct, Contracts Advance or similar tender alert service please cancel it as our Business Intelligence On-Demand Service has been put to the test against them many times and we always come out top. They just can’t put the level of detail into the process that we can as they are servicing every sector and we specialise in Repairs, Maintenance, Construction & affiliated trades and services.

 

Building Types on Current Tenders

On the subject of BIOD we’ve added the ability to sort current tenders by building type.  If you’re insanely bored or need a BIOD walk-through I made a video of the BIOD settings process. There is also a previous Blog post about it.

 

Printouts

These seem to be topical at the moment so just a reminder that you can print off (or Print to PDF) all the most relevant data we think you could use on each organisation. The Printout tab is at the far end of the row of tabs ie. Housing, Finance etc. on every organisations page.

Here is an example for Metropolitan

 

 We are the League!

The July League Tables are out.

 

Universal Map

We have a number of mapping projects on the go so we needed some way of combining everything hence the Universal Map. It ties together the housing and the contract map in an intuitive way. I use that term loosely as this is definitely a project we will be finessing for some time. What’s that I hear you cry? “Gaz make us another one of your great videos to showcase what an amazing map platform your team has built!” – OK you lucky people, here it is.

We are here to help in anyway we can.

 

Thank you for opting in to our requests for GDPR. We do appreciate it and have built you this as a way to read our daily Housingnet News online.

We offer free registration to Housingnet for all Housing Associations and Local Authority employees but you need to agree to our request to show your name and job title (if required) to access the new version of Housingnet News online. Click here to register.

If you log on to Housingnet or click here if you’re already logged in from your computer or mobile you will see a link to the news on your Dashboard and in the Menu under ‘News & Information’. As well as being able to access all the usual news categories we have also added data sections under Business, Housing, Maintenance and Planning with more to follow.

Now we have Housingnet News online we can give you more control over the news you see. The ‘green cog’ opens the settings panel and from here you can add and remove news categories. If Planning is your thing you can also add and remove Regions of interest – a lot of the Planning news is submitted with a postcode.

To give the news a bit more bite we started adding links to pages on Housingnet and on this new online version we’ve also started adding data sections that contain information recently submitted to our system. In the Business section we give an overview of the Financial Return as they are released and a comparison table showing the difference, so far, to last years results. 

You might not know it but we have a strong interest in Repairs, Maintenance & Construction and supply monthly league tables to Construction News – we’ll add them to the Maintenance section when they come out each month. Our R&M, Construction & Planning news and accompanying data sets are a must read for anyone involved in this sector so please spread the word to your teams.

 

Please let us know if you have any questions or require help in registering / opting-in.

We were concerned that some clients were still checking tender emails each day from sources other than Housingnet. You don’t need to do this as we have a team of six doing that for you and we spend a lot more time organising them. The system we have built will replace the daily Bulletin as email is not the best delivery method for this type of content. We hope you like what we’ve built and, as always, we welcome your feedback.

Get started with the new BIOD system

Settings – There are four ‘Settings’ panels – Current Tenders – select Regions and Trades Contract Award Notices – select Regions and Trades Minutes – select Regions and Topics News – select Regions and News Categories Click on the settings icon in each section to save your choices. The selections that you make here will be reflected on all ‘contract’ searches throughout the site.

Select the table icon to link to the main Current Tenders and Contract Award Tables

Tenders and Contracts in a darker font are the latest to be posted.

‘View More’ will take you to the respective table to view older Tenders, Contracts and Minutes

Local Authority, and sometimes Housing Association, Minutes can make for very useful insights. We search all Minutes looking for information we think might be relevant to you.

BIOD works on your mobile as well. Revisit this old blog post to see how to add a Housingnet icon to your mobile home screen and here to learn more about the mobile version.

Welcome to BIOD from Housingnet

Please send any questions and queries to helpdesk@housingnet.co.uk

The Gender Pay Gap reporting deadline was last night so we’ve compiled tables for Housing Associations and Local Authorities. If you have a Housingnet Licence and are signed in you can link to the full tables here:
Housing Associations
Local Authorities

Housing & Care 21 have the unenviable position of coming top so far in the HA table with a mean and median difference between the pay of women and men of 36% and 28% respectively. This means that women’s mean hourly rate is 36% less than men and a median rate of 28% less but this would most probably be due to the various types of job role within the organisation.
Glasgow Housing Association have the lowest minus (-) figures meaning that women are paid a mean hourly rate of 25% higher than men. The most even handed Housing Association is Choices who report no difference in their mean or median pay.

Overall companies in the UK have reported a 9.8% median pay gap in favour of men with construction having the largest average difference by sector.

Housingnet registration is free to all Housing Association and Local Authority people.

* Hourly rate mean and median figures are positive when female hourly rates are lower than men.

The mean hourly rate is the average hourly wage across the entire organisation so the mean gender pay gap is a measure of the difference between women’s mean hourly wage and men’s mean hourly wage.
The median hourly rate is calculated by ranking all employees from the highest paid to the lowest paid, and taking the hourly wage of the person in the middle; so the median gender pay gap is the difference between women’s median hourly wage (the middle paid woman) and men’s median hourly wage (the middle paid man).

Housing Organisation	Stock	Number of Employees	Employees earning over £100,000	Female hourly rate comparison (%)* Mean Median		Who Got a Bonus? (%) Male Female		% of women in each pay quartile Lower Lower Middle Upper Middle Top
				Places For People Group Limited	182,725	11,365	57	6.3	-5.5	5.8	4.3	52.3	57.7	59.5	58.6
Clarion Housing Group Limited	101,393	3544	50	5	-1.8	72.4	75.3	43.3	60.9	61.6	46.2
Sanctuary Housing Association	66,878	8423	20	17.8	11.3	2.9	1.8	64	71	62	49
The Guinness Partnership Limited	55,107	2718	17	6.4	-4.8	50	58.3	51.3	53.7	59.4	48.3
The Riverside Group Limited	45,865	2710	12	8.1	6	76	74.8	61.4	70.6	70	55.3
Home Group Limited	44,197	2664	18	11.9	5.3	9.2	10.5	65.1	66	69.1	54.4
Sovereign Housing Association Limited	45,580	1862	24	5.2	7.2	61	58	61	40	42	43
Peabody Trust	43,590	1143	28	-2.4	-7.1	75.6	79.8	26.5	58.3	50.2	48.9
Together Housing Group	35,603	1300	8	6.4	10.5	0	0	65	47	35	36
WM Housing Group Limited	33,269	922	5	15.9	5.8	0	0	65.6	58.1	57.4	53.2

Housing Associations
Local Authorities