10 The Vanguard Method
(Seddon 2005, p. 179)
10.1 Prologue
In 2006, the housing department of Portsmouth City Council owned and was responsible for the management of over 17 000 tenanted and leasehold properties in which around 51 000 people lived (O'Donovan and Zokaei 2011). The department's operational budget was £80 million and it delivered its services through a directly employed staff of approximately 600 and a variety of private sector contractors. The housing service was meeting the Council's own Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and the Audit Commission rated it highly. Despite these favorable results, the Head of Housing Management, Owen Buckwell, was constantly having his ears burned by councilors whose surgeries were full of residents complaining of poor service. Buckwell decided to find out what was really going on and began by applying Seddon's Vanguard Method (VM) to “reactive repairs,” where residents were complaining of having to wait for ages to get repairs completed satisfactorily (see O'Donovan and ...