Recommendations
and next steps

Recommendations

Financial institutions (lenders to housing associations):

Financial institutions that provide capital to housing associations could take steps to ensure that their financing accommodates and encourages a measurement-based, data-led approach to retrofit where possible. Lloyds, for example, will ensure that this approach could be supported by its green retrofit financing product partially guaranteed by the National Wealth Fund and could be reflected in key performance indicators in Sustainability-Linked Loans (SLLs).

Housing associations:

Housing associations could utilise technology to enable measured approaches to retrofit to gain an improved understanding of the thermal performance of their portfolios, better scope retrofit interventions and hold retrofit suppliers to account for delivering the expected improvements in performance and energy efficiency.
If adopting the use of technology to scope and deliver retrofit, housing associations could use the Impact Assessment Plan outlined for this pilot study as the basis to assess whether the environmental, social and economic outcomes have been delivered as expected.^t This report has provided a baseline of expected benefits, and so the next step for housing associations would be to utilise this technology and to assess if these outcomes are delivered in practice when employing a measured approach to retrofit.

Government:

The Government could allow for a more data-led approach to EPCs and consider how net zero policy interacts with Awaab's Law to avoid perverse outcomes.
In December 2024, the Government published a consultation proposing options for reforming the energy performance of buildings regime.²⁹Among the proposed reforms are recommendations to update EPC metrics and refine the requirements for EPCs, with acknowledgement that EPC metrics could make greater use of measured energy consumption and other time-series data. This could include the type of real-time thermal performance data collected for this pilot project. As it is anticipated that any changes to EPC metrics will be introduced in 2026, the findings of this project should be considered by Government as it responds to the consultation.

Technology community:

Technology providers should be open to piloting their products in a transparent way and sharing learnings to support wider industry rollout in a manner that maximises the potential benefits. Key to their success will be their understanding of the holistic sector challenges and how these could be addressed by an intelligent measured data approach. This should include being open to independent validation of the accuracy and effectiveness of their technology.

_{^tSee 'Appendix 8: Impact Assessment Plan' in The Science Behind the Insights for further details.}

Next steps

How can these outcomes be delivered and verified?

This report has outlined a range of potentially beneficial outcomes that could be achieved by adopting a measurement-led approach. However, the insight delivered by such an approach will only result in positive change if used to inform more effective action. Further, this positive change can only be credibly evidenced if a robust approach to impact measurement is in place.

To address the first of these points, TGE worked with pilot project partners to develop a Theory of Change (or 'logic model'), articulating how the insight provided by the Senze platform could be used to influence action (see Figure 8). This happens in four main ways:

By providing real-time data and analysis to enable Bromford Flagship to scope, plan and prioritise its retrofit programme more effectively
By providing retrofit delivery partners with more accurate information to enable them to implement better targeted interventions
By providing Lloyds, as a provider of funding for retrofit works, with better understanding of the outcomes of funded retrofit programmes.
Once works have been completed, by providing the ability to verify whether the anticipated changes in property performance have been achieved.

Figure 8: Theory of Change for the pilot project

Overall, this theory of change can provide a framework to enable an assessment of the actual impact delivered through any retrofit programme utilising this type of technology, and to ensure that different organisations are held to account for delivering outcomes. Any future deployment should also take account of the associated impact risks and underlying assumptions, as outlined in the full Theory of Change framework in The Science Behind the Insight document.^U

_{^USee 'Appendix 2: Theory of Change' in The Science Behind the Insights for further details.}