Lean Six Sigma For Leaders

Personal Leadership Perspective Mini Case Study – UK Government, Homes and Communities Agency

Mark Canning, Senior Area Manager, Homes and Communities Agency.

The Homes and Communities Agency (HCA) is the UK government's housing, land and regeneration agency, and the regulator of social housing providers in England. Around 900 people work at the HCA in offices across England. The agency is responsible for:

• increasing the number of new homes that are built in England, including affordable homes and homes for market sale or rent;
• improving existing affordable homes and bringing empty homes back into use as affordable housing;
• increasing the supply of public land and speeding up the rate that it can be built on;
• regulating social housing providers to make sure that they're well managed and financially secure, so maintaining investor confidence in the affordable housing sector and protecting homes for tenants; and
• helping to stimulate local economic growth by using our land and investment, and attracting private sector investment in local areas.

The HCA's Lean Continuous Improvement programme was launched during May 2016 with a programme of awareness‐raising delivered during the summer. Eight improvement projects commenced during autumn 2016 to progress a first phase of processes improvement projects, which were largely due to complete around spring 2017.

1. Why did you start your Lean programme – what prompted you to get going?

There were two key prompts which stimulated the HCA's Lean ...