Guides

Home Improvement Agency (HIA) services originated over 30 years ago with a vision to provide responsive, client-centred solutions to low income, older owner-occupiers’ home repair, maintenance and adaptation problems.

The early pioneers, independent ‘Care and Repair’ or ‘Staying Put’ services were small scale and largely funded by the charitable sector.

While many of the original agencies still operate, most agencies are now managed by housing associations, local authorities or private companies with funding from local authorities and health services.
The HIA sector is almost as well defined by its differences as by its similarities, but all HIAs share two key facets:

1. Client-centred support provided in a person’s own home
2. Expertise in making changes to the physical fabric of the home.

Used together, these key strengths provide HIAs with a unique selling point as a provider of services to vulnerable people. These strengths are well suited to drive forward the development of new business, as attributes that differentiate and set apart the sector from other providers in an increasingly segmented and competitive market of support services.

Knowing how to design a successful home adaptation is a key element of any successful scheme. Whatever your role in the process, you should know what good looks like and be able to challenge unsatisfactory practice.

Our design guides are presented to offer suggestions on how to design home adaptations. If you have any comments or suggestions, then please get in touch. And we’re always looking for photos and case studies of successful schemes to share.