Assessment tool to help landlords design and implement retrofit programmes

A housing stock assessment tool that helps Registered Providers and private landlords design and implement strategic retrofit programmes for their housing stock.
Retrofit

Problem Addressed

The solution works with local authorities and landlords to develop cost-effective retrofit programmes that meet their cost, comfort and carbon goals. Without having data ready, and the software to model it, local authorities are missing opportunities to bid for funding, to target that funding where it is most needed, and gain efficiencies from layering with other investment.

Solution Overview

Parity Projects work with local authorities and landlords of every size to develop cost-effective retrofit programmes that meet their cost, comfort and carbon goals. Their Portfolio tool aims to solve three core challenges:

  1. Portfolio gives users access to, and confidence in, their data. The onboarding process makes sense of complex and potentially conflicting sources; data confidence scores help users track, manage and address uncertainty; and users are able to report and model from a compiled set of data across their stock.
  2. Portfolio tests options for every home, in any scenario. Without having data ready, and the software to model it, landlords are missing opportunities to bid for funding, to deliver works to void properties, and to identify efficiencies alongside other works.
  3. Portfolio uses a whole house dataset for a whole house plan. Using archetypes and summary datasets misses detail. Parity’s service fills in the gaps in housing data, by incorporating multiple sources, and addresses the gaps in the RdSAP methodology through updates to measures, pricing and carbon factors.

Parity Projects’ housing stock assessment service, Portfolio, helps Registered Providers and private landlords design and implement strategic retrofit programmes for their housing stock. The landlords of over a million homes now use the service, including Clarion, National Trust and Places for People.

Portfolio makes sense of landlords’ rich but complex data sets to test retrofit options against a range of metrics and within the different constraints facing different retrofit programmes.

Key to the service is its modelling capability. As well as reporting on baseline performance and identifying all potential measures for each property and across the stock, Portfolio tests user-defined investment scenarios. These can:

  • Seek the most cost-effective ways of reaching energy targets, such as minimum SAP rating, demand reduction or carbon emissions, across all stock or a specified group.
  • Model the effect of a planned installation programme.
  • Identify additional measures that meet various criteria that could be added to an existing programme.
  • Calculate SAP, EI, fuel bill, heat demand reduction and CO2 savings for all options and scenarios evaluated.

The service is a standalone solution, open to sourcing data from asset management systems, in-house databases and survey providers. It is not a replacement for in-house assessment, but gives landlords the ability to plan works at scale and target in-house surveys accordingly, whether that is to move forward with a PAS2035 retrofit assessment or simply collect more data to improve decision-making; and to track progress.

Portfolio is available on an annual licence, and is priced on the basis of number of homes, starting from £3,950 for landlords with over 1,000 homes. The cost per home reduces substantially with scale.

Company name

Parity Projects

UK availability

Yes

Solution launch date

2016

Links

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Case Study

Liz Blackwell, Group Head of Environmental Sustainability, L&Q Group: “The Portfolio tool has played a crucial role in being able to benchmark our housing SAP ratings, track progress and ultimately set meaningful targets. This has made it possible to include SAP targets within our recent sustainability-linked bond £300m bond, focusing on reducing carbon emissions and improving energy efficiency in residential homes, while creating more affordable homes for people at the same time”.

David Smith, Resources Director, Broadacres: “In the Housing Sector the funders are very keen on Associations’/RP plans for reaching SAP C by 2030 and forecasts for Carbon Neutrality in 2050. A lot more of the facilities offered by the Banks and Bonds are linked to achieving ESG targets, now and in the future. They discount the financing for improving SAP ratings in our homes in year, measures to reduce our carbon footprints more generally (for instance replacing fleet with EVs, more landscaping) and improved sustainability in our future development plans. The targets they introduce are being measured annually to ensure continued discount against the loans. Longer term the funders are interested that RPs have a plan in place for both 2030 targets as well as 2050. The Portfolio planning tool has helped Broadacres plan for both of these critical dates, allowing us to incorporate some critical assumptions of our future costs and borrowing needs. The funders are taking these plans; medium and long term very seriously!”

Facts and Figures

£3,950

Price for landlords with over 1,000 homes. The cost per home reduces substantially with scale.

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