Somerset Housing Partnership

In November 2005 the five councils in Somerset submitted a bid for funding for the implementation of a Countywide Choice Based Lettings (CBL) System. The ODPM subsequently awarded the project £100,000. However, early work on the development of a Countywide CBL scheme highlighted the possibility of achieving far greater capital and revenue savings, operational efficiencies and improvements in Customer Services by extending the collaboration to the joint procurement of an integrated Housing Needs IT system for Somerset. The central objective of this project was to procure a leading edge, web-enabled (accessible through any browser interface) Integrated Housing Needs System, from a single supplier.

GEM Associates was invited to assist the project team in the procurement process and to develop a set of cross organisational policies and procedures to assist in its effective implementation. The project was completed successfully with a set of common procedures being accepted and adopted alongside the software implementation.