Last month, the 2026 ROCC Strategic Advisory Board (R-SAB) brought together an expanded group of housing sector leaders to provide a broad range of operational, technical and strategic perspectives.
Once again, this annual meeting served as a collaborative space where members could challenge and influence ROCC’s product direction in line with the real pressures facing repairs and maintenance services.
Its overarching purpose was to align ROCC’s mission, values and goals with tangible business strategies, ensuring that the company remains competitive and responsive to change.
Ultimately, the board’s core mission remains focused on driving innovation in repairs and maintenance to directly improve the lives of the tenants we serve.
Combining human expertise and AI
A strong theme throughout the meeting was the need to ensure people are at the centre of innovation. ROCC set out a clear position that AI should support colleagues, improve resident outcomes and reduce repetitive manual work, rather than replace human judgement or simply follow market trends.
Peter Luck, Managing Director, ROCC, presented a clear and ethical perspective on the role of artificial intelligence in social housing technology, emphasising that AI should be viewed as a tool to support people.
While ROCC is making extensive use of AI to improve efficiency across its organisation, his presentation cautioned against the growing trend of “AI fluff” — in which AI is marketed as a superficial enhancement rather than addressing poor processes or weak data foundations. The message was that robust automation and well-designed systems will always deliver greater value than technology driven by hype.
His presentation also explored concerns about the increasing use of AI to reduce costs and replace employees, warning that this approach risks undermining the human-centred nature of the social housing sector.
Peter reflected on both the optimism inspired by AI’s potential to empower staff and the concern that organisations are adopting AI without fully considering its long-term impact on people and services. He reinforced that innovation should always begin with the question of how technology can assist human beings, rather than how it can replace them.
To demonstrate this commitment, ROCC announced several long-term pledges, including ensuring AI will support its staff rather than replace them, and maintaining a responsible development approach focused on secure, ethical, and practical AI applications that are robust and future-proof, providing long-term confidence to its partner base.
Jodie Pitcher, Product Manager, ROCC, also showcased how ROCC is embedding artificial intelligence into practical product features that address real operational challenges rather than jumping on the bandwagon of industry trends.
Members welcomed this approach, while also making clear that AI must be transparent and subject to human validation before it can be trusted in operational decision-making.
They also agreed that AI should only be adopted where it delivers measurable benefits for both housing staff and residents, keeping the resident experience at the centre of innovation.
In return, ROCC challenged R-SAB members to reject unnecessary or superficial AI adoption and instead champion human-centred innovation that enables people to deliver better outcomes for residents and communities.
Introducing ROCC Insights
Matt Watts, Head of Customer Success, ROCC, also reviewed the progress of the R-SAB partnership over the past year and outlined a strategic direction for the future. His session encouraged the board to move beyond incremental software improvements and focus on addressing the larger strategic challenges facing the social housing sector.
A key announcement was the introduction of ROCC Vantage, a cloud-based analytics platform developed in response to feedback from the 2025 R-SAB event.
Designed for housing associations and local authorities, the platform aims to transform operational repairs data into executive-level dashboards, enabling organisations to benchmark performance against sector peers.
The session prompted productive discussion around data governance and the future role of AI. Members explored how the correct use of operational data could encourage collaboration amongst peers, allowing providers to identify areas for improvement and discuss best practices for achieving those improvements.
Looking ahead, ROCC outlined a vision for an AI-powered analytical layer that, once data is fully normalised, could automatically identify performance gaps and recommend practical improvements to workflows, software configuration and operational processes based on proven approaches adopted across the sector.
Key strategic business challenges
Throughout this meeting, the board identified and analysed the macro-level workforce challenges currently impacting the housing sector and shaping the future of social housing operations.
While many of these issues are interconnected, they collectively highlight the growing pressure on housing providers to deliver more with fewer resources and maintain high levels of customer service. They included:
- Emerging trade skills gap: Organisations continue to struggle to recruit and develop tradespeople with the specialist skills needed to meet evolving regulations, compliance standards, and future maintenance demands.
- Supporting vulnerable customers: Delivering personalised services is becoming increasingly complex, requiring smarter systems that can adapt to individual tenant needs and improve customer experiences.
- Disconnected data and systems: Siloed asset, tenant and repairs information limits operational efficiency and highlights the need for more organisations in the market to adopt systems like ROCC that provide a single, real-time source of truth for all housing maintenance and repairs works.
- Financial pressures: Housing providers must maximise shrinking budgets by reducing waste, improving long-term planning and identifying collaborative cost-saving opportunities.
- Mergers and organisational change: System replacements and restructuring place significant pressure on teams, making effective change management and business continuity increasingly challenging.
- Recruitment and workforce retention: An ageing workforce, skills shortages and difficulties attracting new talent continue to impact service delivery across the sector.
- Understanding project dependencies: Organisations need greater visibility of how technology, compliance and operational processes interact to avoid disruption during the implementation of multiple transformation programmes.
- Reducing manual administration: Automating more repetitive, low-value tasks would free frontline and back-office teams to focus on higher-value work.
- Modernising the user experience: Simplifying and refreshing system interfaces would improve usability, reduce training requirements and increase productivity.
- Improving scheduling flexibility: Enhanced visibility and management of non-appointed works would help planners and operatives respond more effectively to changing workloads.
- Expanding the single source of truth: Bringing together tenant, asset and repairs data into one unified platform would support better decision-making, scheduling and customer outcomes.
This session was important for sharing ideas and developing possible solutions for social housing providers, drawing on the industry expertise present at the event.
Reflections and closing remarks
R-SAB 2026 concluded with a roundtable evaluation, during which members shared their reflections on the day’s strategic value.
All members commented that they found spending time with peer customers highly enlightening and praised the collaborative environment, with many commenting that what ROCC has introduced with R-SAB is a truly unique market experience that is highly valuable for all members.
Some of the feedback from board members included:
- “I found spending time with the group highly enlightening, and I am leaving optimistic that our frontline challenges were truly heard and that tangible progress will be visible by next year.”
- “I appreciated the collaborative environment. It is highly refreshing to engage in genuine roadmap co-creation rather than sitting through a standard vendor sales pitch.”
- “I believe this was the most productive and mature R-SAB event to date, with the collective group resolving systemic challenges together.”
Commenting on the day, Peter Luck said: “Today was without doubt the most successful R-SAB meeting to date.
“This year, the board celebrated a significant 50% growth in membership and the new members brought immense value to the table, creating a healthy, productive balance of constructive challenge and criticism.
“Looking to the future, ROCC is fully committed to maintaining a continuous, transparent narrative regarding all development progress.”
If you are a housing association, local authority or maintenance contractor, you deserve to have the right software and tools at your disposal.
For more information about the future we are building at ROCC and how our software can help you, get in touch with a member of our team.
