A tenancy audit programme that never quite finishes
Your policy says every home should have a tenancy audit visit on a regular cycle. The purpose is simple: confirm who lives there, update household details, check the home's condition, spot support needs, and find the occasional home that is sublet or empty. In practice, the programme is a spreadsheet of addresses. Officers print forms, visit when they can, write notes by hand and type them up later, sometimes weeks later.
Findings go by email: a repair to the repairs team, a support need to the tenancy sustainment team, a concern about subletting to the fraud officer. Some are followed up. The programme falls further behind each quarter.
Why audits stall
- Visit planning is done on a spreadsheet, not by patch and route.
- Paper forms mean double entry and delay.
- Tenants are not told in advance, so many visits find nobody in.
- Household details collected on the visit are not updated in the housing management system.
- Findings are passed on by email and not tracked.
The visits themselves are valuable. It is everything around them, planning, recording and follow-up, that is too manual to keep up with.
What an incomplete programme costs
Homes that are sublet or abandoned go unnoticed, which means households on the waiting list who could have been housed. Support needs are found late, after a tenancy is already in trouble. Repairs and condition issues spotted on the visit do not reach the repairs team. And household data, which feeds everything from vulnerability flags to stock planning, stays out of date.
The mobile tenancy audit we build
- Homes due an audit are listed from your housing management system and grouped by patch, so officers can plan a day's visits along a sensible route.
- Tenants get a message before the visit with the date, the reason and a way to rearrange.
- On the visit, the officer completes the audit on a tablet: household members, contact details, photo ID check following your procedure, a photo of the tenant if your policy includes one, and the condition of the home.
- Support needs, repairs and concerns are recorded as findings. Each creates a task for the right team, such as a repair job, a referral to tenancy sustainment or a case for the tenancy fraud officer.
- Household and contact updates are written back to your housing management system, after a check by the officer, so the record is current.
- Where nobody is in, the next attempt is scheduled, and homes with repeated no answer are flagged for a closer look under your policy.
- Managers see progress by patch and the findings raised, and can see whether follow-up tasks have been completed.
| Finding | Goes to | Tracked as |
|---|---|---|
| Repair needed | Repairs team | Job raised |
| Support need | Tenancy sustainment | Referral |
| Household change | Housing management system | Record update |
| Possible subletting or non-occupation | Tenancy fraud officer | Case opened |
| No access, repeated | Housing officer | Flag for review |
Your tenancy audit policy, ID checks and any action on tenancy fraud are decided by you and your advisers. We build the tools around your procedure.
What the programme looks like with it
Officers complete the audit once, in the home, and leave with the record already done. Findings reach the right team the same day and can be seen through to completion. The programme becomes a map of patches with progress rather than a spreadsheet of addresses. Household data is current, which helps every other team that relies on it.
Is your tenancy audit programme like this?
- Tenancy audits are behind schedule.
- Officers fill in paper forms and type them up later.
- Findings from visits are passed on by email.
- Household details in your system are out of date.
- You cannot easily see what happened after a finding was raised.