Plymouth Community Homes: API connections for social housing and car park rental services
"Now that we have started experimenting with the Woosmap API platform on our website, we’re exploring more ways to enable our customers to self-serve by providing them with information through visual and easy-to-use services."
- A 30% to 40% reduction in wasted applications and a better quality of service.
- Display 3000 car parks or garages for rent on a user-friendly map.
- Innovative services, including rental charges based on distance from a location.
Plymouth Community Homes (PCH) is a housing association that provides affordable homes in Plymouth, Britain’s Ocean City. Over 16,000 properties provide homes to more than 35,000 people in the historic port city and the surrounding areas.
PCH also thrives to build strong communities and neighbourhoods where people want to live. That’s why in May 2022 it launched an improved garage and car park rental service, with a digital map powered by Woosmap. It displays 3000 spaces owned by PCH, available for rent on a weekly basis.
From historic cobbled streets to digital mapping
Plymouth’s street names offer direct connections to the city’s rich maritime history. From the shops of Mayflower Street to the cobbles of the Barbican and Sutton Harbour. But nowadays, Plymothians also need connections to services to make daily life a smoother sail. In particular connections to available parking spaces!
Plymouth Community Homes helps to solve this problem by matching people with car parks or garages available for rental. PCH tenants get priority access to those coveted spaces. They are also available for the city’s 242,000 inhabitants and entrepreneurs, like plumbers or plasterers who need storage for materials.
"PCH is a really strong organisation which is already making a positive difference within communities across Plymouth and beyond. Plymouth is a city which is reinventing itself through regeneration and by attracting new investment, and PCH is integral in supporting this journey."
An API approach to plug and “tweak” services
Rather than developing a map, Plymouth Community Homes used an already available Woosmap map and API platform. This accelerates the delivery of services and avoids delays and costs for code maintenance.
PCH also uses Woosmap Store Locator to display its 3000 rental spaces on a user-friendly map. This application packages several APIs matching PCH’s needs. Applicants can explore the map or enter their postcode to search in their area using Woosmap Store Search and retrieving the nearest rental spaces with Woosmap Localities API. Results can be filtered between garages or parking, and vacant or available. To protect against theft or vandalism, the map only displays a “site“ address for car parks and garages in the same zone. Then an application starts with a click on a pin or the selection of a spot from a drop-down list.
PCH and Woosmap also worked together to personalise existing Woosmap APIs to create innovative services. For instance, with Woosmap Distance API, PCH can adapt the rental charges for its tenants depending on the distance between their house and their car park or garage.
“ Woosmap widgets were already developed - we just had to plug them in and make sure the data was displayed correctly on the map. Vernon, our contact at Woosmap, was very helpful in coming up with ideas and advice and even building demos for our projects. I don’t think we would have gone so far without the help and support of the Woosmap Team. ”
Judith Harvey, Senior IT Business Analyst and Project Manager at Plymouth Community Homes.
Self-service to save time and improve quality
PCH wanted to retire Microsoft Access Database and consolidate the processing of emails and phone requests into a single Oracle database that linked in into their Housing Management System to save time by removing unnecessary data entry and also reducing errors. At the end of 2019, they decided to move to self-service to reduce administrative time and improve the quality of service. The team started looking at online mapping tools but their costs exceeded the budget.
PCH then discovered that it could easily upload its list of car parks and garages to Woosmap’s API platform. Along with the data from its Housing management system. Woosmap experts also helped them to improve the display of information and optimise their budget.
This self-service map improved the quality of applications, with a 30% to 40% reduction in the number of wasted applications. Because people would send several applications for different locations. Or reapply in hopes of bumping up the waiting list. Now people apply once for up to 10 choices, saving hours of administrative time and accelerates the processing of applications.
"With our map, we now have an automatic synchronisation of the application database. This improves the quality of the applications and also the quality of our service to staff and customers alike."
Future collaborative projects
Plymouth Community Homes is always thinking about services to improve the daily lives of its tenants.
Among those future projects to be launched on PCH’s new website is a map display of “grass zones” with information about the grass areas owned by PCH in the city and the cutting schedule for it. And a “fly tipping” reporting service, to help PCH’s community stay clean and safe where PCH staff members will be dispatched to the exact location of the fly-tipping as they receive the clean-up request.
PCH are also looking at additional maps to display their new housing developments across the South West and Housing with Support schemes in Plymouth.
"We’ve seen a significant increase in our customers accessing our services digitally. Now that we have started experimenting with the Woosmap API platform on our website, we’re exploring more ways to enable our customers to self-serve by providing them with information through visual and easy-to-use services. Even our customers who prefer to use our Call Centre can enjoy a better user journey because our improved digital offering can be used by staff to answer questions."