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How Citizen Housing Saves 18 Hours Daily on Vehicle Checking

 

Before FleetCheck, Citizen Housing Association faced significant challenges with outdated fleet management systems. Without real-time insights, the team was left with a fragmented oversight, often having to steer paper around the business to handle reporting, assets, and PAT testing. When their previous provider discontinued support, they turned to FleetCheck Professional to centralise and streamline their fleet operations. The team now benefits from real-time visibility, simplified reporting, and improved compliance, safety, and accountability across the organisation. The switch has also led to significant time savings each day of 5 minutes per vehicle check, equating to savings of 18 hours daily across their 220 drivers.

About Citizen Housing:

Industry – Real Estate and Property Development
Fleet size – 310
Fleet mix – Engineer L1H1s and L2H2s, Ford Transit Couriers, Cage Tippers
Location – West Midlands
Tags – Fleet Management, Asset Management, Operational Efficiency
Products – FleetCheck Professional

It’s far more than just a fleet management system; it’s a whole solution for us. Every Housing Association running in-house teams should look at FleetCheck and see what it can do for them.

Scott Fincham | Business Support Manager| Citizen Housing

It’s far more than just a fleet management system; it’s a whole solution for us as a housing association. Everyone should get on it!

Scott Fincham | Business Support Manager| Citizen Housing

Citizen Housing, is one of the UK’s most trusted social housing providers, managing 30,000 homes for diverse communities across the West Midlands. With multiple systems and databases in place, they sought a solution that could integrate everything into one platform, streamlining fleet operations and asset management for their small team.

Why FleetCheck?

Scott Fincham, Business Support Manager, and the team wanted an integrated platform to oversee their entire fleet and assets, while managing their vehicle tracking via Quartix – a strong and longstanding partner of FleetCheck. After conducting some market research, they narrowed their options down to two solutions. FleetCheck stood out for its comprehensive functionality, intuitive design, and cost-effectiveness.  

The beauty of where we ended up with FleetCheck is a product that is cost effective but also holds all the information we wanted it to hold. FleetCheck are unique in this way. There’s plenty of fleet management systems out there, but to get something with the functionality that FleetCheck has…it’s valuable, to say the least.

The Challenge

Limited Fleet Oversight and Inefficient Processes

Clunky Software

Citizen Housing initially used an Access database and later transitioned to an IT helpdesk system, hoping to build a fleet management solution of the back of it. However, it was cumbersome to use, particularly on mobile devices, and lacked essential features like a driver app.

Lack of Real-Time Visibility

The absence of dashboards and real-time alerts left them without a clear view of upcoming tasks, their priorities, and what was out of date, resulting in limited oversight of their fleet.

Complicated Audits

Collating information for audits and reports was a time-consuming process, with paper frequently steered around the business to manage assets and perform PAT testing.

Many things were lacking in our previous system. We had no driver apps, so it was very clunky from a mobile perspective. It timed out every 30 minutes while you were using it, and there were no real dashboards for me to see what was going on.

The Solution

A Centralised Hub for Real-Time Fleet Management

FleetCheck Professional has consolidated their fleet information into a single, easily accessible hub, eliminating information retrieval delays that once stretched several days. With an extensive inventory -including 2,200 PAT-tested items, 4,000 registered power tools, 600 working-at-height items, and around 50 air hood systems - the dashboard and easy-to-see alerts have made tracking effortless, keeping the team focused and informed.

Scott and the team have manipulated the system to suit their needs, linking assets to individual vehicles, drivers, and even buildings, eliminating the need to buy extra licences for vehicles, improving visibility and compliance, and helping keep costs low.

Our ladders need to be inspected every 6 months by a supervisor. Can we attach that? Yes, we can. Fire extinguishers in our vehicles need to be checked every year. Can we attach that? Yes, we can. We can get reports off the back of this too, which is critical in terms of our compliance.

The Impact

Cost Savings, Enhanced Compliance, and Actionable Insights

Cost Savings That Make a Difference

By consolidating systems and transitioning all vehicles to FleetCheck and Quartix, Citizen Housing has saved money. For instance, by utilising the Driver App to manage scaffolding, they anticipate saving hundreds of pounds on quotes and contractor fees.

We’re a charity at the end of the day, so less money spent on a clunky IT system means more money to put back into a home for someone.

Improved Culture of Safety and Compliance

FleetCheck’s Driver App has helped foster improved compliance practices, and a stronger culture of responsibility around vehicle usage, safety, and maintenance.

Having an app encourages audits, the safe keeping of vehicles, and an improvement in the sort of culture around safe and positive driving.

Enhanced Visibility and Fleet Insights

Citizen Housing now benefits from real-time insights into fleet performance, costs, and maintenance schedules. The system simplifies reporting and allows for easy tracking of defects, fuel usage, live odometer readings, and more—streamlining operations and improving data accuracy.

From odometer readings to comprehensive asset reports, we now have greater visibility into our fleet’s performance, costs, and upcoming deadlines. The speed and detail of the reports is really impressive.

Saving on Paper, and Saving on Time

Easier navigation means fleet administrators now save 10-15 minutes per day each, equating to over 120 hours per year across the two-person team. Meanwhile, the Driver App and digital vehicle checks save their 220 engineers 5 minutes per check, amounting to over 18 hours saved every single day.

I love the Driver app because it’s a lot quicker. I just bring it up on my phone – tick tick tick tick – it’s all done, I don’t even think about it.

Andy Somerfield | Multi-skilled Engineer | Citizen Housing