How Hertfordshire County Council uses CACI’s Acorn to house displaced Ukrainians

Challenge

Rematching Ukrainian guests with new hosts is a substantial part of the council’s Ukraine Sunflower Campaign, as it is aimed at encouraging more rematch hosts to come forward while retaining those already in place. Due to the conflict  continuing, some hosts are unable to house guests longer term. It is also preferable for guests to remain hosted within their original vicinity, district or area, both from a cost perspective to the council and for guests’ wellbeing, as they may have formed relationships and begun settling in.

With a key message being “you only need a spare room”, the council operated under the assumption that the ability to host and likelihood of having a spare room fundamentally came down to affluence. This prompted conversations around the impact that more targeted efforts could have on campaign outcomes rather than operating on a scattered approach and the powerful role that data could play.

Solution

The council decided to concentrate an early phase of their rematch campaign in St Albans, a district within Hertfordshire. Through a blended data approach that leveraged segmentation insights from CACI’s Acorn data, persona profiles from Acorn’s Pen Portraits and HCC records, the council was able to pinpoint St Albans as the area with the highest concentration of likely hosts with the help of Laurel Smithson, Strategic Communications Manager. These typically comprise households with adult children who had moved out or were living in larger properties with spare rooms available, making them an ideal demographic for hosting.

Brianna Schubert-Mordey, Intelligence Analyst and Geodemographic Lead at Hertfordshire County Council, initiated an integrated data strategy by merging Acorn’s demographic data with Hertfordshire-specific datasets. This enabled the creation of a customised segmentation model and development of seven unique personas tailored to reflect the characteristics of the Hertfordshire population. An algorithm, K-modes, was used to analyse data for each postcode and determine the optimal number of clusters, allocating each postcode to one of seven defined clusters. This would eliminate human bias when identifying similar types of residents, with each cluster becoming a persona.

The composition of each segmentation and each of the seven personas was then assessed using the data available. This enabled naming conventions for each persona that represented respective key factors. These 7 Personas are as follows — Young and Financially stretched, Stretched Families, Comfortable Neighbourhoods, Affluent Families, Financially Secure Maturity, Highly Affluent Maturity and Struggling Elders, and have been created to reflect Hertfordshire’s local population.  CACI Data has been used along with proprietary data the council reported on about council tax bands, dwelling values based on sold house prices and the likelihood of individuals calling into their call centre compared to other households within Hertfordshire.

Following this, Laurel approached Brianna and the HCC Homes for Ukraine team regarding the Homes for Ukraine project. Their goal was to identify target households that could potentially host a family based on these seven personas. Brianna’s team sent Laurel a list of postcodes to be aligned to these specific segments to assess the affluence, financial maturity and security of various areas across Hertfordshire, with a particular focus on identifying comfortable neighbourhoods and affluent households to gauge the affluence maturity and financially security of various areas in Hertfordshire, as well as postcodes containing comfortable neighbourhoods and affluent families.

St Albans and its vicinity was ultimately targeted with Royal Mail leaflet drops and digital advertising, with trackable links set up for each form of communication. The leaflets were most one of the most successful in leading people to the council’s rematch website.

Due to the success of the St Albans pilot, the council was inspired to execute this rematch campaign once again in East Hertfordshire, another higher affluence area where the target demographic of potential hosts for displaced Ukrainians is situated. Due to feedback received on the reliance of Royal Mail delivery, including some households within the targeted postcode being considered inappropriate (such as care homes), this phase of the campaign took an even more targeted approach. Colleagues from the Homes for Ukraine team undertook the hand delivery of leaflets, allowing for higher reliance and feedback on the ground. This initiative has seen a higher uptake than the St. Albans targeting.