Karbon Homes
Digitisation Case Study
Background
Housing Association Karbon Homes serves the North East and Yorkshire, with a portfolio of around 34,000 homes. Since its formation in 2017, it has focused on delivering three strategic aims – to provide as many good quality homes as it can, to deliver excellent services to its customers, and to shape strong, sustainable places for its communities.
Reasons for digitisation
The organisation predominantly held paper records or “house files” which didn’t lend itself to their modern, agile ways of working. They wanted to digitise their paperwork to free up space, reduce risk in the event of fire or flood and provide accessible digital files for their housing teams.
The company initially trialled the digitisation approach with their Byker office which has been a great success. They’re now looking to continue the digitisation process across all other sites.
See below photo showing the before and after results of the digitisation process! Karbon Homes were delighted to have a new meeting room facility.
Our Digitisation Process
Digitisation Project Benefits
Making best use of office space – new meeting room created.
Reducing physical storage costs.
Ability to search files quickly using digital search vs manually looking through a file.
Customer information accessible for remote or site-based working colleagues (rather than a need to travel to offices for physical paperwork) providing agile ways of working and improved customer service.
Improved data compliance and security in line with GDPR regulations and audit requirements.
Sustainability Benefits
•Reduction of paper files being photocopied and physically distributed, helping to reduce carbon footprint.
•Around 3.1 trees of paper recycled, following digitisation.
•Shredded paper was pulped and recycled in line with ISO14001.
•Once pulped it was recycled back into paper produce for tissue paper and toilet roll.
This digitisation project has made a huge difference to everyone. Everything that we need relating to tenancy is now accessible, at the touch of a few buttons, no matter where we are working. It’s helping us to provide a better service to both our internal and external customers, allowing us to respond to requests in a super-efficient and timely way.
Key Statistics
Environmental Impact
1, 092 Kg
1,092 kilograms of paper was recycled through the digitisation of Karbon Homes house files in Byker. This equated to around *3.1 trees.
Recycling
Once shredded, recycled paper is made into 900kg bales ready for shipment to a paper mill to be recycled into paper produce.
New Paper Products
This is sent to Essity Paper Mill in Prudhoe, via Cleardata’s waste management partner Riverdale Waste who are certified to ISO 14001. The shredded paper is pulped and made into tissue paper, or toilet roll.
38 Bags
38 bags of waste were also removed from Karbon Homes second archive storage room for shredding. If these were placed in a line this would cover 7.5 metres!
Client Feedback
Why did you choose Cleardata?
We asked Scott Edgar, Information Governance & Data Quality Manager at Karbon Homes why Cleardata was chosen as their scanning provider?
“We were keen to choose a business which met our procurement goals. These have a strong focus on how our suppliers' social value can bring benefit to our own customers and communities.
Cleardata is based in Blyth, which is very local to Karbon Homes, and their own social value aligns with that of Karbon. The company employs over two hundred staff in Northumberland, providing full and part time roles for many in the local community.
Choosing a local business also meant that we would not have to transport our documents miles across the country, which helped to reduce the impact of the digitisation project on our own carbon footprint.
Cleardata demonstrated clear experience working in the housing sector, along with information security accreditations and expertise in handling large volumes of sensitive data. This provided us with the assurance and trust needed that they would securely handle our housing records, in line with GDPR requirements. We were impressed on visiting their scanning bureau. They have very fast IBML scanning technology and the quality of the scanned images has been fantastic.”
What was your route to procurement?
“The contract was awarded via the NHS SBS Document Storage, Records Management & Integrated Solutions Framework, which provides a compliant and efficient procurement route for public sector organisations.”
How have you found the experience working with our team?
“We wanted a supplier who would collaborate and work with us over several digitisation projects for the next few years.
Cleardata’s approach has been to act as our document management partner, rather than a supplier. The whole team has been supportive, with special mention to our Account Director, Jess Meikle and Project Co-Ordinator, Joey Deakin. Both have given us a lot of advice and experience from digitising records for other housing associations, offering challenge and advice throughout the process to ensure we get a compliant and cost-effective solution that works well for our business and meets our goals.
Personally, I’ve found the experience working with Cleardata very beneficial. We’ve learnt a lot from the initial pilot project and will take this experience forward. Their team is friendly and approachable, it’s been a real pleasure to work with them and I’m looking forward to our next project.”
Safer Communities Officer at Karbon Homes added:
“The digitisation of the tenancy files has been beneficial in my job role. I often need to locate tenancy agreements to prepare legal paperwork. I’m now able to easily access these from the documents tab on the system, rather than manually searching through heaps of paper documents, some of which were irrelevant or relating to previous tenancies.“
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Notes:
*It is estimated that a standard pine tree, with 45ft of usable trunk and a diameter of 8 inches will produce around 10,000 sheets per tree.
Karbon Homes Case Study
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