You’ve committed to improving your housing services. Will your plan actually work?
You’ve got an improvement project to deliver. The board expects results. Tenants need to see a difference.
But if your plan relies on the same targets, SLAs, contractors, technology and management approaches we’ve used for years, what makes you confident this time will be different?
Drawing on nearly 30 years of experience, we’ll help you examine your existing plan, challenge its assumptions and explore other ways to achieve genuine improvements in service, cost and capacity.
No charge. No obligation. Leave with other options to consider.
DESCARTES CONSULTING — Making services easier to use and easier to run.
Average days per repair, from first contact
A large Scottish council
Routine repairs that came back
A small Scottish council
No access at the first visit
A large Scottish council
Before and after the redesign, from Stuart Corrigan’s published casework. The organisations are not named. See all the cases
See where your repairs service stands
A few minutes each. The result is yours either way.
Awaab's Law Phase 2 brings seven more groups of hazards under fixed timescales on 30 November 2026, and those timescales run on the tenant's clock. Read the guide →
A practical method for real results.
A clear, structured way to understand what is happening, redesign the work, prove it works and then expand it across your organisation.
Study the work.
Find out what is really happening, from the tenant's point of view. Use the right data. Confront the brutal facts.
Redesign the work.
Remove unnecessary steps, handoffs and repeat visits. Design around resolving the tenant's problem.
Design stock against demand.
Make the right parts available where the work happens. Stock what you use, in the right quantities, and adjust to actual usage.
With Stock Right NowRun a controlled experiment.
Test the new approach in one trade and one area. Compare the old way with the new. Let the evidence make the case.
Evaluate and expand.
Use real results to decide where to go next. Hardwire the new way of working and roll it out progressively.
From a shortage of plumbers to plumbers with time to spare.
One council was sure it needed more plumbers. When the team followed the work, they found operatives arriving at a home without the part, driving to a builders' merchant, queuing, and driving back. Hours of a working day could disappear around merchant visits.
By redesigning the work and changing how stock was managed, the shortage of plumbers began to disappear, from the same workforce.
- Started with a shortage of plumbers.
- Changed the work. Improved stock. Fewer journeys. More repairs finished in one visit.
- Ended with spare capacity, without asking anyone to work harder.
Become the most useful source of thinking about housing repairs performance in the UK.
Written from inside repairs operations.
Low Effort is the method of Descartes Consulting. The housing side comes from two people who have spent years inside the work they write about.
Stuart Corrigan
Managing director, Descartes Consulting. Co-author, Housing Repairs ER.
Nearly 30 years inside service operations as a practitioner, a manager and a consultant, including Scottish social housing. He co-founded Vanguard Scotland in 1999.
Neil Alexander
Founder, Stock Right Now. Co-author, Housing Repairs ER.
In housing repairs since 2009. Stock Right Now makes software for managing the parts carried on repairs vans.
Straight answers on repairs.
Within target. Out of patience.
Why "completed on time" explains 12% of what residents feel, and what to measure instead.
Read →What does first-time fix actually mean?
The competing definitions, and what each one hides.
Read →The demand your service creates for itself.
Chasing, repeat visits and the tenant as unpaid project manager.
Read →Awaab's Law Phase 2
What changes on 30 November 2026, and why it runs on the tenant's clock.
Read →Short reads on repairs.
Whose Clock Is It Anyway?
Why an on-time housing repair can still feel late to the tenant.
Read →Don't Let the Resident Become Your Repairs Manager
Never try to solve a repairs backlog by keeping everyone busy. Oddly, keeping everyone busy may be what creates it.
Read →The Trust Tax
The strange reason a lack of trust may be creating more work than you think.
Read →The Housing Improvement Options Briefing
Bring the improvement project you’re responsible for. In one hour with Stuart Corrigan, look at what must improve, what you know, the options on the table and where else to start.
No charge. No obligation. Leave with other options to consider.
© 2026 Descartes Consulting Limited. All rights reserved.
Registered in Scotland under company number SC787331.
Registered office: The Old Station Cowdenburn, Lamancha, West Linton, Borders, Scotland, EH46 7BD.
General information only, not legal, financial or other regulated advice. Results from case studies depend on their circumstances and are not guaranteed. See our Disclaimer.