Here's an idea

Wrekin housing trust has had enormous success in tackling the time it takes to re-let properties, just by making just a few alterations and adjustments to the way the properties look.

The trust manages 1200 homes in mixed-tenure estates in Wrekin and Telford, Shropshire. In late September 2001 we took on 15 tenant auditors, five of whom were specifically assigned to the re-lets department, who could look at our vacant properties and suggest ways in which we could tackle the problem of having voids.

They made a number of interesting suggestions, including putting up different kinds of curtains in vacant homes instead of just putting up the same ones in all our properties. This is a good idea because when all our houses have the same curtains, everyone knows that the properties belong to the trust and that can make them more of a target.

Another suggestion was that we should tell people when the property next door is empty so they can keep an eye on it and so they know when work is being done. This way they can report any disturbances.

Crucially, we are looking at how we can broaden out the scope of people who we attract to social housing.

The auditors recommended to us that we should pitch social housing towards people leaving the armed services, those looking for temporary accommodation and people who are divorced.

In this way we can find new tenants for our properties much more quickly and have a greater mix of tenants.

The idea of sending a thank-you card to tenants to tenants who leave their properties in good condition has also been suggested.

The result of all of this is that at the end of 2000/01 the average time to re-let a property was eight weeks, but at the end of 2001/02 this had dropped to 3.7 weeks.

The changes we made to the vacant properties have played a significant part in achieving this result and we expect that the figures for 2002/03 will show a further drop.