Metropolitan Housing purchase RAFTS

Metropolitan Housing, one of the UK’s leading providers of affordable housing, care and support services, has recently purchased Stopford’s Records, Assets and File tracking system, RAFTS.

The housing organisation own and manage a portfolio of nearly 38,000 homes providing services to more than 71,000 customers across London, the East of England and also the East Midlands. Met Housing will be using Stopford’s RAFTS to help manage the physical storage of files.

With RAFTS, users can create and manage locations, buildings, rooms, shelves, boxes, files and equipment. Record Managers can easily keep track of where information is stored within a large facility and can request to withdraw files or boxes. Through the system’s advanced search engine facility, managers can search thousands of files in seconds, quickening the process of retrieving and withdrawing data. Fully managed request features speed up withdrawal requests and provide a history of previous loans and denials.

Due to the large amount of private information held by Metropolitan Housing, it is important any data stored in boxes will be kept private from staff who will handle delivery and recovery from off-site storage facilities.

With RAFTS, staff at off-site storage are only given unique ID numbers of boxes and files but not knowledge of the contents within. Also, user permission levels ensure only staff with relevant permission have access to key data and information. Lower level users may be able to see file names and tags that identify the items they need, but will not have access to the information stored against the record until they receive approval from an admin.

Any requests for files can be vetted by a Records Manager with approval for the file being restricted to only the most senior members of staff. Once loaned, the requester is informed when the file is due to be returned, sent reminders and late notices. All file requests and loans are also logged against the file to provide an audit trail of the file’s movements.

Stopford look forward to working with Metropolitan Housing.