Homes England: Transforming BPSS with a digital-first approach

Background

Homes England is the government’s housing and regeneration agency, responsible for increasing the supply of affordable homes across England. As a non-departmental public body, it plays a vital role in delivering housing programmes, supporting regeneration, and enabling development across the country.

To support this mission, Homes England required a reliable and efficient pre-employment screening process aligned with the Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS).

The challenge

Homes England sought to enhance the speed and reliability of its BPSS checks, while accommodating the needs of a diverse workforce that includes contractors. The organisation had previously experienced low success rates with its digital identity solution, creating delays and slowing onboarding timelines. Employment history verification, which relied on personal references, added further complexity - extending screening timelines and increasing administrative burden.

To keep pace with growing volumes and improve candidate onboarding, Homes England aimed to modernise its approach to pre-employment screening.

The Solution

Homes England partnered with Giant Screening through the G-Cloud procurement framework to implement a digital-first BPSS screening solution.

Working collaboratively, a tailored implementation plan was developed to support the organisation’s internal processes and candidate journey. The onboarding was designed to be straightforward and efficient, with platform demonstrations and training provided to ensure teams were fully equipped ahead of launch.

To further enhance their screening programme, Giant Screening introduced:

• Instant Activity Verification – providing early indications, and supporting personal references with secure, real-time data from trusted sources such as HMRC - enabling faster, more accurate employment history checks.
• Proprietary referencing database – where manual references are needed, Homes England could rely on Giant Screening’s referencing database featuring thousands of pre-validated and continuously updated referees.
• Simple, certified Digital Identity Verification journey aligned with GPG45 standards - improving fraud prevention and ID accuracy while enabling a single, seamless journey for Right to Work and DBS criminal record checks
• Criminal record checks processed rapidly through direct DBS integration
• Sanctions checks and CV verification to strengthen overall compliance in addition to BPSS

Custom reporting and personalised candidate communications were also configured to ensure consistency across touchpoints and support internal visibility – each communication became an extension of Homes England’s brand. To support the nuances of their workforce, personalised terminology was easily accommodated within the Giant Screening platform. Homes England and their candidates, also benefit from built-in accessibility features, including text-to-speech, high contrast modes, and translation into over 240 languages.

They were also safe in the knowledge that their candidates and employees had real-time access to Giant Screening’s dedicated support hubs – featuring helpful FAQs, videos and live chat connecting them directly to our operationally trained support teams.

The results

Since adopting Giant Screening’s solution, Homes England has significantly improved the efficiency of its BPSS screening process, consistently achieving turnaround times under the HMG guidance of 15 days. Powered by our Instant Activity Verification they can also gain early indications often available within 24 hours, kickstarting the BPSS process. Manual referencing delays have been eliminated thanks to our proprietary referencing database, digital identity verification is more effective, and employment activity is now supported and confirmed instantly through trusted data sources.

The implementation was completed with minimal disruption, and the HR team now benefits from a fully digital, streamlined process that supports compliance and offers their diverse workforce an industry-leading candidate experience. With these improvements in place, Homes England is now better equipped to accelerate critical hiring and drive forward housing and regeneration initiatives across the country.