The Benefits of Ask:Enact
Ask:Enact helps organisations meet Scotland’s Ask and Act duties while saving money, improving services, and supporting staff. Ask:Enact bridges knowledge gaps so professionals act early and consistently—reducing risk and avoiding crisis.
Recruitment and Retention
The challenge
Public and third-sector teams struggle to recruit and keep staff. In homelessness services, workforce shortages harm delivery. Replacing staff is costly and time-consuming.
The Ask:Enact difference
On-demand guidance reduces the need for deep specialist knowledge on day one. You can hire for values and behaviour, then give staff confidence with in-app support. Faster onboarding and lower stress improve retention. Avoiding even a few replacement hires saves significant budget.
£6,100
Average cost to recruit one employee*.
78%
Providers reporting recruitment/retention pressures**.
Faster
Onboarding with in-app expert guidance.
Fewer exits
Confidence and support reduce burnout.
*2022/23 CIPD Resourcing and Talent Planning Survey. **Homeless Link Annual Review (2023)
Training and Knowledge
The challenge
Training is expensive and pulls staff off the frontline. Policies change; refreshers are needed to stay current.
The Scottish Government has committed £8 million over 3 years to roll out the new Ask and Act duties. Parliamentary discussions underline that success will depend on clear national guidance and comprehensive training for frontline staff across councils, health, justice, and housing.
The Ask:Enact difference
Consistent, always-updated guidance at the point of need reduces lengthy programmes and regular refreshers. Cutting even one training day per person frees capacity and budget. Ask:Enact allows for a more meanigful and impactful use of the allocated funds.
£1,530
Average annual training spend per employee. 2020 UK Gov figures
£8m
Scot Gov estimated 3-year rollout costs for Ask and Act duties.
On-demand
Immediate answers replace hours of training updates.
Consistent
Same guidance across teams and locations.
Backed by UK Gov figures and Scottish Parliamentary records
Time and Capacity
The challenge
Frontline staff face heavy caseloads and limited time. Searching for the right answer, chasing referrals, or checking procedures takes valuable minutes in every case.
The Ask:Enact difference
Immediate answers, generated action plans, and guided referrals. Saving just ten minutes per case scales to hundreds of staff hours each year—time you can reinvest in complex work.
10 mins
Saved per client per week = 157hrs per year.
£25,000
Value saved for 10 team members at £16/hr.
Action plans
Clear, documented next steps in seconds.
Referrals
Guided pathways reduce repetition and direct clients to the services they require.
Illustrative capacity example based on Setting the Bar study recommended limit of 20 clients
Service Quality and Consistency
The challenge
Advice can vary depending on who is asked. Inconsistent or incorrect information delays support and undermines trust. Bias and stigma can also creep into conversations, putting people off seeking help.
The Ask:Enact difference
Ask:Enact ensures consistent, accurate, and unbiased responses across services. Every professional, from housing officers to healthcare staff, draws on the same trusted knowledge. This consistency improves quality, reduces errors, and ensures compliance with duties.
100%
Same guidance for every user.
Auditable
Traceable, verified information.
Trauma-informed
One conversation with more impact.
Compliance
Answers taken from legislation, guidance and local policy.
Evidence of daya set available by request
Language and Accessibility
The challenge
Translation and interpretation cost millions and delay responses, missing opportunities and erroding trust.
The Ask:Enact difference
Multilingual by design. Guidance in multiple languages, instantly—reducing costs, speeding access, and improving inclusion.
£7.4m
Scottish Health Boards interpreting spend (2019/20).
Instant
No booking delays for advice.
Accessible
Supports diverse communities.
Lower cost
Less reliance on external interpretation.
Figures based on Inbox Translation research 2022
Prevention = Real Savings
The challenge
Crisis responses are expensive. Research by Crisis shows the public cost of one person sleeping rough for a year is around £20,000, while preventing that same case costs about £1,400. Preventing 40,000 cases of homelessness for one year could save around £370 million across public services.
The Ask:Enact difference
Ask:Enact supports early identification and action. By equipping staff to intervene before problems escalate, it helps reduce the number of people reaching crisis point. Each prevention not only changes a life but also avoids significant costs for public services.
£20,000
Extra costs to public services in one year of someone being street homeless.
£1,400
Average cost of preventing a case.
£2m
Saving if 100 cases prevented.
Upstream
Designed for early intervention.
Crisis UK figures (contextualised)
Data Benefits
The challenge
Scotland already collects HL1 (homelessness applications) and Prevent1 (prevention activity when someone approaches a council). Useful—but lagging, inconsistent across authorities, and focused on people already near crisis.
The Ask:Enact difference
Everyday use generates anonymised, real-time intelligence about risks and needs from health, justice, housing, and third-sector conversations—before someone reaches the council. It complements or replaces HL1 and Prevent1 by filling the earliest part of the prevention pipeline.
- Early warning – arrears, relationship breakdown, health triggers.
- Cross-sector visibility – patterns across services.
- Geographic insight – hotspots for targeted action.
- Voice of lived experience – qualitative context, not just counts.
- Service performance – see where referrals succeed or stall.
- Policy feedback – live evidence to refine strategy.
£100m+
Annual temporary accommodation spend in Scotland.
HL1
Crisis-focused applications data.
Prevent1
Council prevention activity at point of approach.
Real time
Ask:Enact adds cross-sector prevention insight.
Complements HL1 & Prevent1 reporting
Better for organisations. Better for staff. Better for people.
Recruit and retain the right staff. Reduce training costs. Free up time. Improve quality and consistency. Cut translation spend. Generate prevention data Scotland unlike anything previously captured. Prevent homelessness and make lives better.