The Moral and Economic Case for Digital Inclusion in Social Housing
An increasing proportion of our social housing customers, across all income brackets, regard a fully transactional digital service offer as the ‘norm’.
Delivering our service in this way, enhancing our more traditional telephone and face to face service offers, will not only raise customer service for our digitally included residents, but also help us identify and invest more in supporting our most vulnerable residents not just helping them get on-line but also in terms of employment and financial inclusion.
Our social purpose means every penny of surplus funds saved through this approach are reinvested into our communities.
Housing Associations like ours have been aware for some time that one of the best things we can do to help residents to maximise their incomes is to get them online and confidently using web-based services.
Our Get Connected programme was launched four years ago when just over 50% of our residents were online. This year no less than 77% of our residents now have access to the internet, this is good news but there is still work to do. From our own research, 38% of those who have never used the internet simply don’t want to and a further 28% don’t know how to.
The economic case for our residents is clear – there is a broad range of research highlighting the financial benefits of being online, even when connectivity and device costs have been taken into account. The average online shopper saves £560 per year, access to a wider range of financial products and services, and the fact that the majority of jobs can now only be applied for online makes digital inclusion vital.
This need will only increase with time – soon it will be the main way individuals and households claim and manage their benefit payments. Like many organisations and public services we are also making it easier for our residents to transact with us on-line, saving them time and money.
One of the main reasons we selected Leeds City Credit Union as our national banking partner was their ability to provide access to banking services and affordable loans on-line.
So we see digital inclusion as both an economic and moral issue and so integral to household finances that our digital inclusion programme is delivered by the same team as our financial inclusion programme. Low incomes, low credit ratings, lack of skills, and a lack of understanding about the importance of being online are all challenges to be overcome.
