Housing database software - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)

Following for the same!

It might be a bit left-field and not its intended use-case but you could look at Causeway's Asset Management software: https://www.causeway.com/infrastructure/asset-management

The software was initially designed as a highway asset management system but it is incredibly flexible with the underlying principles of "assets" + "inspections" + "jobs." Where it is initially set up for highways where an "asset" might = road and a "job" might be "resurface carriageway," there's no reason why you couldn't build a setup where the "asset" = house and a "job" = "decorating"

All the data is linked. So you could query "find me all outstanding decorating jobs" or "find me all jobs related to houses that have 4+ bedrooms"

We have managed to setup most of our flood risk management processes inside it where we manage both our assets and applications such as our Statutory Consultee role and Land Drainage Consent applications.

Hi Helen - we are still using Access for Housing Monitoring (and separately for Employment) - and for Local Plan Consultation (holding consultee details and storing comments/responses). They work very well for us but IT won’t support Access - fortunately we haven’t needed them to, to date, but we will need to replace the Local Plan consultation database as we have a regular problem with connectivity. We don’t want to invest a lot of time and money in proprietary product(s) at this stage – partly as we have reorganisation pending - but do need something like Access that we can easily configure/reconfigure our way to suit our needs/team. Any ideas on what to use instead as a general database option that we can learn to use and adapt for lots of purposes greatly welcomed. Excel doesn't cut it.

Have a look at https://www.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/584632846362953   Arcus Global has, over the past couple of years, been working with a number of Local Planning Departments to produce a monitoring tool set.      I dont mind setting up a teams call and providing an overview to interested Local Planning Authorities if you'd like? 

StatMap has developed monitoring capabilities as part of its HorizoNext Planning module suite.  However, that forms part of the main Planning application and not at present as a separate module.

https://www.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/419925916803898

If you would like to discuss this, please do get in touch.

CDP Smart is used by Hertfordshire CC (Monitoring on behalf of the 10 districts in the County (until LGR)) - purpose built and actually a great system  SMART – Spatial Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology – cdpsoft 

Yes I agree CDP smart is a brilliant system I ever used in my 20+ years career however it may be costly.  When I moved to a new job I had to set up a new housing database on Access using similar format as CDP smart. As Access is still not supported by IT team, I ought to consider using Excel spreadsheet or alternative software which is supported by IT for housing monitoring because one day I may not be able to access Access due to an unexpected error or something technical which mean I could lose my rich data. I download the data annually as back up just in case.

Until a couple of years ago we used CDPSmart, which worked well but became unaffordable as partners dropped out and prices increased.

We now use PowerBi which has worked well so far with a little refinement needed. It is update and maintained by our GIS officer, so I don't know the specific ins and outs, although I believe it does use SQL in the background.

Good luck.

Thanks for the feedback. Currently exploring migration of Access / development of an SQL database, that can link to our GIS and export to Power BI and Excel. Will see how we go...

At Torridge we now hold our housing monitoring data in a SQL Server database, having migrated it from Microsoft Access tables a couple of years ago. Similar to others, this was partly over concerns about the depreciation of Microsoft Access at some point but also over lack of corporate support for Access and a recognition over the resilience and robustness of Access. We were also finding that the Access version was getting much slower as we added more and more data - recognising that we now have plot level housing data in it back to around 2015. We are however still currently reliant on a Microsoft Access database for the front end - providing data entry forms, queries, etc. We are at the early stages of exploring how we might use Microsoft PowerApps to replace this reliance on Access in due course. The benefit of having it on a SQL Server is that we can also do a lot more with the data and do now surface some of it to the public via a PowerBI 'housing monitoring dashboard' on our website - www.torridge.gov.uk/housingmonitoring. 

Does anyone's monitoring database also build in forecasting? 

In terms of forecasting, at Torridge we have created an internal PowerBI dashboard (see below) that we use for monitoring s106 obligations on individual sites. This draws upon our housing monitoring data (held in a mySQL database as mentioned above), the Housing and Economic Land Land Availability Assessment (HELAA) forecasts, and links to our planning application and s106 data held in IDox Uniform.  It doesn't strictly forecast but uses the HELAA estimates, and projections forward of past completions, whilst giving data on average completions times for the individual site. It draws that data into one place with the intention of making life easier for those who have to track and invoice for s106 obligations at certain trigger points. We wanted to also show Council Tax occupation data but have run into a little resistance internally to that idea! It is still somewhat work in progress and the projected completions from the HLA (Housing Land Account) are not showing correctly in the version below!