Making the journey to an energy efficient home more transparent for residents

Every opt out is a missed opportunity to help a household in need of a more comfortable, more affordable home. Resident disengagement outs also lead to wasted resources, including both time and grant finance, that mean fewer homes and households benefit overall.  

These conditions need to be addressed to for us to move toward retrofit at scale in London.  

To help tackle the issues around lack of clarity for residents, and create more informed insight for us to begin to make targeted interventions, Warmer Homes London has procured and is developing a new digital platform for London’s Local Grant programme.  

What are the current pain points? 

The retrofit process is often opaque and unclear to residents. Updates can come from multiple different contractors, and include references to steps and measures residents might not be familiar with, or fully understand the benefits of.  

This confusion can lead to hesitation, delays, or residents opting out during the process.  

The Warm Homes: Local Grant programme is designed to support low-income owner occupiers and tenants: the programme is delivered in London by the Greater London Authority, on behalf of 31 boroughs, with the support of Warmer Homes London. Applications to the programme are made through the national DESNZ portal, before then being sent to regional delivery bodies.  

Traditionally following their application, all updates to Londoners who have applied are delivered via post or phone. Residents then don’t have a clear, accessibly overview of next steps, and can’t easily navigate where they are in the process. They may also struggle to understand who they can speak to, to get further information or ask questions about a particular stage.  

Boroughs also lack a clear single source of information to understand where residents are within the process, meaning opportunities to provide targeted support could be missed. 

How can a new platform help address this?  

The new digital platform is designed to create a clearer digital touchpoint for Londoners who are making their homes energy efficient: helping to guide them through the process, and create the opportunity to explain individual steps in clearer language. Standardised engagement across the city also allows us to better track and measure resident sentiment over time, keeping us close to any emerging patterns.  

The platform is being developed in partnership with boroughs, and being tested with both boroughs and residents. Both boroughs and contractors will benefit from the end-to-end workflow management the platform will enable: this will be even more vital as London moves to a 6-contractor model of delivery for the Local Grant programmes.  

What's next? 

Following beta testing with boroughs and representative groups, later this year the platform will be fully rolled out to Londoners applying to the Local Grant programme.  

We understand that there are groups of vulnerable residents who need further support, that the digital platform cannot provide directly. This is especially true those who may be digitally excluded. That is why we are exploring the opportunity to deliver targeted support with local third parties, designed to help key groups at risk of energy inefficient homes complete the process. This follows our Expression of Interest issued earlier this year.  

In the future, resident feedback collected alongside data around where key drop out points are will also be combined with other previously dispersed streams, such as delivery costs, smart meter data, and damp and mould sensors. For example, integrating data from damp and mould sensors with data held on sentiment, measures delivered and building types will allow social housing landlords and tenants in London to have assurance that works have had no adverse effects and also potentially even identify and prevent mould problems before they escalate. Work in this area is being delivered in partnership with LOTI, through our joint IoT Temperature and Humidity Sensor project.