HCA selects Landmark Information Group to deliver Housing Market intelligence, as part of its £4bn housing framework programme

·         England’s national housing and regeneration agency awards contract to Landmark to provide essential, robust property intelligence

·         Data to be used to inform the development and delivery of affordable housing programmes and help the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) meet its target to realise 150,000 additional homes by 2015

·         Landmark Analytics – formerly Calnea Analytics and part of Landmark Information Group – to deliver strategic market intelligence data to support HCA’s decision making processes

Landmark Information Group, the UK’s leading supplier of digital mapping, property and environmental risk information, today announces it has been awarded a contract by the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA). The contract is to provide property intelligence data to the housing and regeneration agency, to support the development and provision of its £4bn¹ capital investment programme into delivering affordable housing across England.

Via Landmark Analytics – formerly Calnea Analytics – the HCA will have access to a wide range of accurate housing market intelligence, including House Price Index data, average rental price data, bedroom counts and historic transaction information by postcode or area.  By analysing the data as part of its housing delivery programmes, HCA has complete transparency of the housing market in order to make better informed decisions.

The Landmark Analytics’ property database – which is used by HMRC and in models approved by Fitch Ratings and Standard & Poor’s – provides robust market intelligence and includes a wealth of data including 90 million property images, 20 million sold price records, 18 million historic estate agency listings, 2 million energy performance certificates, 3 million floor plans, plus bedroom numbers, estimated internal area and Council Tax banding information.

Simon Short, Team Leader – Spatial and Market Intelligence of HCA said: “The HCA requires robust housing market data to support its decisions. Landmark Analytics met our needs with quality of data provision to support our evidence base.  The Panel assessed Landmark Analytics against a set of criteria and agreed that it provides the best quality and value for housing market data provision that meets our needs.”

HCA is the national housing and regeneration agency for England, with a capital investment budget of around £4bn for the period 2012-15. The agency has a legal duty to improve the supply and quality of housing in England. Its remit includes delivery of a number of schemes including the existing National Affordable Housing Programme, Low Cost Home Ownership including the FirstBuy product and the new Affordable Homes Programme, which includes the Affordable Rent product.   The programme is focused on accelerating the delivery of affordable homes in England with a target of up to 150,000 additional homes by 2015.

Carole Oliver, Business Development Manager, Landmark Information Group said: “We are delighted to be working in partnership with the HCA, providing essential, robust property intelligence to inform the development and delivery of key programmes. Landmark Analytics will provide vital evidence and market transparency on which the agency can base its decision-making processes for the provision of affordable and sustainable housing delivery.”

Landmark Analytics’ is the UK’s only ISO-accredited Automated Valuation Model (AVM) provider and is at the forefront of delivering analytics data to mortgage lenders for use in strategic risk management and fraud prevention programmes.

For further information www.landmarkanalytics.co.uk.  

Carole Oliver

Group Business Development Manager

Critical Asset Intelligence to Reduce Your Risk

Would your organisation have the critical asset intelligence ready for an ‘Asset Register’?
If the answer is no or you are unsure of where to turn, help is at hand from Landmark Analytics:

Following the publication of the white paper for an Asset Register, Housing Providers are looking for help in
accessing clear intelligence that provides clarity on exactly what land and property assets are owned by their organisation. As a result, Housing Providers are working with Landmark Analytics to access its wealth of market data and industry analysis to provide the answers they need. This includes the ability to visualise
portfolios, calculate accurate current asset valuations, digitally map properties with Business Intelligence, plus undertake supporting tasks such as address verification and data cleansing. Carole Oliver, Group Business
Development Manager at Landmark Information Group said: “The outcome of Cosmopolitan and subsequent white paper for an Asset Register has resulted in our clients coming to us for clear asset
intelligence. They want clarity on asset ownership and values, plus robust market intelligence for appropriate tenures, disposal & acquisition and investment strategy. Our expertise in being able to quickly and accurately analyse data and return it with transparency and highly visual direction is proving an essential element in their decision making process.” Concludes Oliver: “The majority of Housing Providers have inherited poor and
inconsistent business intelligence, and it is now more essential than ever that the sector can restore confidence to lenders and Government by demonstrating strategy based on accurate BI.”

Cases in point

Neil Topping, Business Processes Officer of Family Mosaic:
“With over 24,000 properties in our portfolio, it is vital that the information within our property database is accurate on a number of levels. We have undertaken an intelligence exercise with Landmark Analytics, which has a reputation for having one of the UK’s most accurate residential property databases. Our immediate need was to ensure all addresses in our database match the format of Royal Mail’s, however since working with Landmark, we have been able to analyse a wider range of metrics, such as bedroom count. This is particularly important as this information needs to be accurate for the benefit of our tenants. All in all, working with Landmark has saved us a great deal of time and they have been able to provide more intelligence than we were originally expecting at the outset.”

Julian Pimm-Smith, Head of Business Intelligence of Affinity Sutton:
“Affinity Sutton is a location-based business and the GIS visualisation of our asset and tenant information
is a critical component of our Business Intelligence suite. The ability to visualise our information down
to door-level accuracy gives our Asset and Housing staff a picture of their properties and patches that a
spreadsheet could not convey. Our Active Asset Management performance models are incredibly complex. They cover hundreds of detailed attributes over periods of 30 years on thousands of properties. The mapping of that data therefore turns huge sprawling datasets into clear drillable graphics, from the entire country, down through regions and estates, or even down to a single property and its individual financial and qualitative performance. This level of detail is essential for our operation and provides our mobile officers with the ability to access the information they need, via hand held devices, revolutionising operational delivery.”

Simon Short, Team Leader –Spatial and Market Intelligence of HCA:
“The HCA requires robust housing market data to support its decisions. Landmark Analytics met our
needs with quality of data provision to support our evidence base. The Panel assessed Landmark
Analytics against a set of criteria and agreed that it provides the best quality and value for housing
market data provision that meets our needs.”

To discuss how your organisation could benefit from an asset intelligence health check contact:
T: 0330 036 6275
E: carole.oliver@landmark.co.uk
W: www.landmarkanalytics.co.uk

Carole Oliver
Group Business Development Manager

Starting the Year with a Bang!

We are proud to be kicking 2014 off with some excellent news; we are pleased to confirm that Landmark has reached the shortlist of the FSTech Awards 2014 for the ‘Most Innovative Product of the Year’. The product in question is our ‘Q-Mobile’ property data capture solution, following an entry we submitted that focused on how Connells Survey & Valuation has successfully implemented the software and tablet-based technology to aid its mortgage valuation process.

Connells Survey & Valuation has embedded the Q-Mobile software and tablet technology across its business, nationwide.  The technology is the latest development in Connells’ strategy to extend its mortgage valuation report validation, efficiency and quality. Adopting Q-Mobile and Panasonic Toughbook devices is part of Connells’ planned next-generation service delivery and moves to dramatically reduce paper-based, manual reporting across the business.

Now into its 14th year, the FStech Awards recognises IT excellence and innovation across the UK and EMEA financial services sector. To therefore be recognised by the judges and reach the shortlist is a fantastic achievement. 

Winners will be announced on 27 March 2014 and so we look forward to hearing the final results then. http://www.fstech.co.uk/awards/shortlist.php

Landmark Raises the Bar in the Sustainability Software Market

We're pleased to announce the launch of Sustainability Sure, a new platform brought to market via a strategic partnership with ManageCO2. An innovative environmental software development company whose mission is to make carbon, sustainability and energy management easy. 
 

Sustainability Sure is a new sustainability platform that meets the full requirements of the new (October 2013) mandatory carbon reporting for all UK incorporated and stock exchange listed companies. Uniquely, Sustainability Sure combines energy meter analytics, CRC compliance and reporting, GHG reporting and CSR in a single platform. It also conveniently enables companies to automate the data collection and data entry without any IT implementation. In addition the management information derived from Sustainability Sure delivers benefits beyond simply legislative compliance, such as enabling costs to be allocated to specific cost centres as opposed to rolling up to a general ‘catch all’ corporate pot. This platform therefore meets the needs of the Finance Director as well as the Head of Sustainability. Ultimately, Sustainability Sure is a comprehensive and highly intuitive sustainability platform.

We, as Landmark forged a reputation in the energy and sustainability market via their Carbon Counter product, launched in 2010, to help companies manage their emissions in light of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC) legislation. Sustainability Sure now supersedes Carbon Counter.

Sustainability Sure is powered by the ManageCO2 software platform which is doubly accredited and independently tested by SGS, the world’s leading inspection, verification, testing and certification company, and the CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project). Thanks to this accreditation, Sustainability Sure is the only software solution that has been independently tested against, and meets, the international Greenhouse Gas Protocol and ISO 14064 (the international standard for environmental management) as well as DEFRA’s standards of 2012 and June 2013.

ManageCO2’s success stems from the fact that the software was purpose built to fit both the current legislative framework and also easily adapt to future legislation. This has resulted in a product that is seamless and straightforward in its day-to-day application.

David Mole, Business Development Director, Landmark Information Group comments:

“Sustainability Sure combines ManageCO2’s carbon, energy and sustainability software excellence with Landmark’s experience, highly regarded reputation, and excellent sales and marketing teams to offer a truly market leading product.”

Sustainability Sure has already helped a leading university better manage their emissions. As the platform automatically calculates certain exemptions which were valid in this case for the university, analysis showed that the university had in fact overpaid tax on its emissions.  This was flagged because of the way that Sustainability Sure works ensures that data is automatically entered and checked for errors, before generating an automatic report. This results in a far simpler and smoother process for the user.

Adrian Fleming, CEO and Founder of ManageCO2, said:

“Both Landmark and ManageCO2 have an aligned vision for the future of this sector, and this was a logical next step in the development of our relationship. It is a fantastic partnership, one which together makes us probably the largest global carbon and sustainability software provider in terms of client numbers, which currently is in excess of 200 companies with their 100,000 buildings stretching across all seven continents.”

As UK remains on high alert, Know Your Flood Risk campaign launches new Flood Recovery Guide to support victims through the clean-up

Last week saw the largest tidal surge in 60 years, resulting in devastating floods across much of South East England. With further flood warnings being issued across the UK, data from the Met Office suggests that flooding could threaten to become an even more regular occurrence over the coming years.

Since 1960, there has been a gradual increase in how often the UK experiences periods of extreme rainfall. Intense rainfall, which used to occur on average once every hundred days, has gradually become more frequent so that in the last decade heavy rain now falls roughly once every 70 days[1]. The impact of this can be felt nationwide and, with almost 1,400 properties having been affected by the most recent floods alone, more and more homeowners and tenants alike are being urged to take into account the practical considerations surrounding recovery.

Against this backdrop, and in order to provide householders with practical advice in the event of a flood, Know Your Flood Risk has launched its new Flood Recovery Guide. Written by Mary Dhonau, Chief Executive of the Know Your Flood Risk campaign, along with Researcher Carly Rose,  both of whom have first-hand experience of flooding, the document offers an accessible step-by-step guide to help victims through the initial stages of recovery, as well as in the months to come regardless of whether the property is insured or not.

As Mary explains: “When I first flooded, I was caught utterly unaware. I was woken in the middle of the night by my son telling me that downstairs was under a foot of water. I lost all my youngest son’s playgroup drawings along with many other irreplaceable photographs and possessions. However what struck me at the time was the complete lack of help or guidance for people such as myself, caught in that situation.

 “It can be extremely traumatic, and facing the clean-up process is daunting. However, by drawing on our own experiences we’ve been able to break the problem down into a series of manageable steps. It can be tempting to try and tackle everything at once, but there are some really important factors you need to take into consideration, from liaising with your Loss Adjuster through to some really basic health and safety considerations.”

“The average flood claim is estimated to be around £30,000,” Mary continues. “However in many cases householders, particularly in the rental market, don’t even have the benefit of flood insurance simply because it is too expensive. If this is the case there are still a number of things you can do, and often there are grants and charities in place to support you. The real benefit of this guide is that it offers guidance and advice regardless of your situation. Every flood is different, and every house is unique, so the processes you need to follow will not necessarily be the same as your neighbour. It can take up to 12 months before any repairs are completed, but with the right support and guidance, you can ensure that the recovery process is on track even from day one.”    

“We understand as well as anyone the loss, disruption and heartache that flooding causes,” Mary concludes. “However recovery is possible and, even when the situation seems most overwhelming, simply following some practical steps can make all the difference in terms of getting things back on track following the damage caused by flooding.” 

The Know Your Flood Risk Flood Recovery Guide offers a wealth of practical hints, tips and guidance, along with third-party information sources and advice, all presented in an accessible, easy-to-follow format. The Guide is free to download at www.knowyourfloodrisk.co.uk.

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[1] http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2013/2012-weather-statistics

Subsidence - Advice for Conveyancers

In his latest blog, Andy Lucas, Managing Director of Property Assure, looks at properties that have been affected by subsidence and the key documents Conveyancers should be obtaining.

The Valuation Survey includes questions pertaining to evidence of movement and subsidence.  (It should be noted that the Valuation Surveyor is not equipped to identify whether the property is at risk of subsidence only if there is evidence of its occurrence – but we’ll revisit this in a later blog).  Where historic subsidence repairs have been identified the Conveyancer should obtain the supporting documentation to verify that any repairs have been undertaken accordance with the Building Research Establishment (BRE) subsidence classification and repair guidelines and or whether an insurance claim was made by the vendor.

There are 2 main documents that should be obtained:

·         It must be remembered that a significant proportion of subsidence repairs do not require underpinning of the foundations.  However, if any underpinning has been carried out it is a notifiable operation under the Building Regulations and as such, inspections and sign off by the Local Council Building Control Officer should have been carried out.  A formal Completion Certificate should be issued by the Council at completion.

·         Where the repair has been undertaken as an insurance claim, the insurer appointed Building Surveyor / engineer should have produced a Certificate of Structural Adequacy.  This is issued under guidance of the Institution of Structural Engineers (1994) although there is no actual contractual or legal requirement for one to be provided and it is not a guarantee. 

So in the event that previous subsidence is identified you should look to obtain the Completion Certificate issued by the Local Authority and Certificate of Structural Adequacy issued by the engineer/ surveyor who specified and periodically inspected any repairs under an insurance claim.   They should both be available from the Property Owner

The first step is to understand your subsidence risk.  If previous cracking or subsidence has been identified it is always worthwhile appointing a Building Surveyor / engineer to undertake a specific check on the property and review any supporting documentation and thereafter identify whether specific further investigations are required (soil samples, monitoring etc). 

Visit www.subsidencesupport.co.uk for more guidance and advice on Subsidence.

Andy Lucas

Managing Director

Property Assure Ltd

Risky Business 2013 : Environmental Due Diligence Conference

David Mole Business Development Director, Landmark Information Group 

Around 100 delegates, including environmental consultants, engineers, geo-technical consultants and members of the media attended our flagship annual conference Risky Business 2013.

Held at the Institute of Civil Engineers on Wednesday 27^th November, speakers including media commentator Jonathan Davis (Jonathan Davis Wealth Management), unexploded ordnance expert and former paratrooper Simon Cooke (6 Alpha Associates) and Chairman of DEFRA’s Contaminated Land National Expert Panel, Andrew Wiseman( Harrison Grant Solicitors) delivered the latest developments in the field of environmental due diligence. 

Jonathan, Simon and Andrew were joined by fellow industry leaders to deliver updates on a range of topical issues such as the implication of the National Planning Policy Framework on land affected by contamination, ground-gas, European air quality, the macroeconomic outlook for the UK economy, unexploded ordnance, the CL:AIRE Definition of Waste: Code of Practice, flooding, legal issues and sustainability beyond risk-based management.

New to this year’s Risky Business was the launch of our Technology Tomorrow exhibition to showcase our exciting upcoming technological developments including mobile devices and workflow efficiencies.   Delegates were given exclusive access to test and provide feedback on the beta versions of our online map analysis tool, Envirocheck Analysis, and Envirocheck Analysis Mobile, which clients will be able to use during their site investigations.  Please do view our latest video here.

We’d like to thank our speakers for providing such topical insight and for generating much debate. Risky Business 2013 has once again been a huge success and we are still receiving positive feedback along with suggestion for next year’s agenda.  Please do email me at david.mole@landmark.co.uk for any subjects you would like to be covered at future events.