Worthing Homes selects Asset4000 from RAM to manage asset base worth £100m

Sussex-based social housing organisation selects RAM's asset management software to achieve component accounting.

Worthing Homes, a charitable provider of social housing, has selected Asset4000 from Real Asset Management (RAM) to help process and control its £100m asset base. The robust system will enable Worthing Homes to account for assets at component level for its 3,000 homes in line with the Statement of Recommended Practice (SoRP).

Worthing Homes, a registered charity, has a network of over 10,000 customers within the Sussex coastal area. In a bid to provide desirable residences, the organisation works alongside the public and partners to provide affordable rented homes, low-cost shared ownership and sheltered housing.

The latest software acquisition will provide the organisation with a SoRP-compliant asset register with which it can manage its 24,000 components distributed across Worthing Homes' 3,000 properties and deliver a transparent record of all its assets. Helen Neal, Finance Manager, at Worthing Homes,comments, "With the urgent requirement to deliver component accounting under SoRP, we looked into software that was easy-to-useand would facilitate this change in recording and reporting our asset base. RAM clearly appeared to be the market leader, featuring heavily at industry trade shows."

Despite the SoRP deadline being several months away for housing associations, the sheer volume and extent of the task in hand is driving associations to install software ahead of deadline. Helen Neal comments, "Given the new rulings, we required a database that would be able to manage the fine detail of information, so it was purchased with that in mind. We need to have a system in place to manage the high volume of data securely and to provide a smooth transition as we take on component accounting."

Under the new guidelines, associations are obliged to adhere to the change in asset recording. Where a housing unit is currently classed as one asset, under new rulings, anything that is deemed as replaceable within the unit, such as the roof and bathroom, will become a separate asset. In practical terms, this now means that Worthing Homes' 3,000 houses will soon become 24,000 assets, an average of eight assets per home.

In describing the benefits that Asset4000 will bring to the organisation, Helen Neal adds, "Our current general ledger system is SUN; it's a real bonus that RAM integrates directly with SUN and has generic exports already in place. Prior to our purchase of RAM, we kept all our asset data on spreadsheets as the number of assets we were recording was reasonably low and manageable. Under component accounting, a spreadsheet system would be unmanageable; the real beauty of Asset4000 is that it will automatically create a history for us, giving us a great platform to work from."

Helen Neal concludes, "We currently aim to primarily use Asset4000 for our component accounting requirement, however, over time we may utilise other features within the Asset4000 system that assists Worthing Homes in managing its asset data efficiently in one centrally-controlled solution."

For further information, please contact:
Karen Conneely (Marketing manager)   
Real Asset Management   
Tel: +44 (0)1689 892100   
Email : solution@realassetmgt.co.uk