By Dennis Paul, Head of Estates and Environment, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea

The estate services group at the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea piloted an application called ‘Safety Culture’ between April and October 2024, to try to fix estate problems quickly and improve the efficiency of inspection and issue reporting for problems reported by caretakers on their smartphones remotely. The pilot has been a great success in connecting with staff remotely and processing problems more quickly to resolution on behalf of residents, helping to keep estates clean, tidy and safe.

The trial has cost approximately £2,450 to operate during this period, with considerable flexibility to shape costs around staffing levels, interaction and service need.

During the trial, some 2,407 Issues have been reported day to day by caretakers, with bulk waste and communal repairs being most common, but graffiti, fire risks, welfare concerns and grounds maintenance issues also coming up. 2,135 were resolved during the trial.  In addition, a total of 7,634 inspections forms have been completed by caretakers. Of those, 2,472 have been monthly health and safety inspections and 3,850 were quarterly fire door Inspections.  Other forms include site inspections, and they have been developed to produce one2one notes, appraisals and new starter inductions.

A key benefit of the reports function is that caretakers can view and track the progress of their reports and engage by using multimedia in the casework, so taking more ownership of events on their estates. All relevant parties connected with resolving issues have the same access to information to communicate effectively in real time. Actions can be raised to flag failing items, enabling assigned notifications to be sent and tracked to ensure issues are dealt with promptly. 732 actions have been raised during the trial and 445 have been completed too.

The trial has provided greater transparency and efficiency of reporting, with minimal training required. Caretakers and managers have bought into the system and the application itself is customisable, so no consultancy has been necessary.

Of further benefit, the application provides a training module that delivers better constructed training through AI and more efficient recording of data for audit purposes and planning training needs. Importantly, the training tests knowledge of understanding in its delivery and is accessible through smartphones

The ‘Heads Up’ media function has been successful in getting urgent, motivational or emergency messages out to staff quickly, with a chat facility to communicate in an active situation and engage across the group reaching 90% of audience within two hours of sharing messages. The view function shows how many staff have read messages to help assess whether they are getting through.

The system analytics provide strong tools to measure performance and filter functions to support managers monitoring casework. We have been delighted with the progress made and will be shortly developing the lone working functions within our operations and sensors to monitor fire risk, damp and mould in our buildings.