BI System - Social Landlord Portal User Group Meeting - Minutes - 13 March 2024

BI System – Social Landlord Portal User Group Meeting - Minutes - 13 March 2024

Present:

1. Welcome, apologies and introductions

CH welcomed everyone and those in attendance introduced themselves.  The Group noted apologies from Manor Estates Housing Association. 

2.  SHR activity

CH provided the following for information on the Portal/CRM updates:

Some bug fixes applied on our CRM to improve Notifiable Event process when events are closed and to fix our notifications when Local Authorities submit a change of Head of Housing for approval.

• Enhanced security and efficiency of the Notifiable Event process in situations where landlord users associated to the event have changed or no longer have the correct privileges.

Five Year Financial Projections (collection 1 Mar – 31 May)

• Return is now live and available for input.

Charter (collection 1 Apr – 31 May)

• For anyone that makes use of the pdf output – comments added to the return that are longer than 6,500 characters will now appear at the end of the pdf output, this is to help layout of the main return in the output and place comments that take up more than a page to the end.

Stock (collection 1 Apr – 31 May)

• PDF output now included in return.
• Improved the navigation experience for those landlords that complete multiple returns for local authority areas. Dropdown added to allow the user to select the local authority area for update within the stock return (rather than navigating to the main Portal returns page).

Loan Portfolio (collection 1 May – 30 Jun)

• There are planned updates to dropdown lists, include more tooltips and improve validation around facilities, loans and capital repayments – more detail will be available to finance colleagues who are due to complete this year’s return ahead of the form going live.

Audited Financial Statements (collection 1 Aug – 30 Sep)

• New field in the Subsidiary and Connected Organisation section to collect information on Activities carried out. This will initially be pre-populated using last info from 2019 Charter to be updated during collection period.

CH outlined the role that Andrew Wylie has within the team looking after portal and CRM system, including dealing with any bugfixes.  He is currently working on tightening up the process for notifiable events.

EC asked if there was a decision around which option would be used regarding the navigation behaviour.  CH advised that this would be option 2, after feedback from group it was the preferred option.  EC offered thanks for the change to allow for PDF to be available and advised that this was helpful.

CM raised that within East Dunbartonshire Council there has been a change to the management and that discussions were ongoing around the arc return so may find that questions arise from this. 

CH will take forward work based on feedback to include a summary total for landlords that are national operators that would provide a total of all local authority areas. CH post-meeting note – work will be taken forward for the stock form in 2024-25 and will be in contact with the national operator landlords with options for the design.

TH raised that she has found an issues when recording the number of community alarms within the stock, the number is included in the total number of properties whereas the CA properties are a subset of Sheltered properties. CH post-meeting note – work will be undertaken for the stock form in 2024-25 to remove the community alarm count.

TH asked where to raise any issues that may occur when inputting figures to the portal.  CH advised that the SHR mailbox should be used and that this is monitored by the admin team and emails passed to the relevant person.

CH advised that the minutes for the meetings and terms of reference will be available on SHR website. 

3.  AOB & Current usability matters

No further matters of concern were raised for discussion at the meeting.