'Archetyping' London's housing

When making homes energy efficient, semi-detached homes aren’t created equal: yet often under typical property data, that and other simple terms might be the only kinds of classifications available for delivery teams.  

Inaccurate or non-granular data can make identifying properties, contracting, designing and evaluating retrofit projects more difficult. This can cause unnecessary surveys, delays, additional unexpected costs, or residents receiving mixed communications as to the eligibility of their home.  

That is why, through our Social Housing Fund Strategic Partnership Strategic Partnership, we are working with the ZCA, Ambue and Energiesprong UK to ‘archetype’ around 8,000 social housing properties across London.  

Why Archetyping?  

Archetyping is a way of segmenting and understanding our housing stock, to create a clearer and accurate picture of precisely what kinds of homes make up a portfolio.  

Having this data in a usable and accessible format is a key pathway to increasing retrofit at scale by enabling better planning, and reducing risks and costs.  

The role of the Social Housing Fund Strategic Partnership  

Our Social Housing Fund: Strategic Partnership is made up of 21 boroughs, and 5 housing associations, collectively working to retrofit 8,000 homes across the city.  

Delivery partners in the Strategic Partnership, alongside their consultants and contractors, have been involved in this project since its inception. This has helped to shape the key needs of the project, such as making sure the archetypes are flexible and useful to multiple different team members who may be working on retrofit.  

By working at a pan-London level, we can also make sure our archetype groupings and terms are standardised across a wide portfolio of homes. We can then put the information directly into the hands of those delivering retrofit, so they can see the benefits immediately.  

What are the benefits of 'archetyping' in this way?  

• We can provide our delivery partners with accurate and useful insight into their housing stock
• It will make commissioning high quality retrofit for our residents easier and quicker
• We can help London move beyond borough boundaries and create knowledge on common housing types across the city 
• This will strengthen WHL’s understanding of London’s housing stock, so we can tailor support to where its most needed  

What stage are we at currently?  

Working with WHL and our Strategic Partnership, ZCA are using a tool to create ‘personae’ of the housing stock within Social Housing Fund, where they categorise the key characteristics of each home. Then each borough or housing organisation can decide which characteristics are most relevant to use when categorising their own housing stock. These personae will also be available in a map format, so delivery partners can visualise precisely where different kinds of housing stock are in their portfolio.  

Currently the archetypes for the first batch of 4,000 homes have been created, and are now being checked by the Strategic Partnership’s retrofit consultants, to make sure they are valid and useful.  

What’s next?  

The 8,000 homes being archetyped are the homes being delivered under the Social Housing Fund Wave 3. Our long-term goal is to connect the archetype data to data we will hold on retrofit delivery, cost, and energy performance outcomes.  

This way London can hold knowledge on what measures have led to the most effective outcomes for residents, on an archetype by archetype basis, across the city. This helps to standardise retrofit packages, and build the pathways to retrofit at scale.