Renfrewshire Council has a vision for enabling Smart Social Housing across its portfolio of 12,000 social homes to improve the health and wellbeing of their tenants, to tackle poverty and inequalities head-on, and to enable prevention and service sustainability at scale.
Their first-of-type invest to save model unlocks savings from deploying a go-live digital bundle of superfast broadband and IoT environment monitoring into 10,000 social homes, with the target being for the investment to pay for itself whilst providing the foundation for deploying a portfolio of in-the-home digital solutions to powerfully enable housing as a social determinant of health and to shift the balance of care by keeping people safe, well, and socially connected in their own homes.
The Council’s approach is highly innovative in commercial, technology, and methodology terms. Whilst the invest to save case continues to be refined, the approach is already proven as one that can be replicated at scale across the UK, hence the rationale in sharing the in-flight story to date.
What is the problem to be solved?
How to develop stackable whole system invest to save business cases to fund strategic investments in at-scale connectivity as the foundation for Smart Social Housing (SSH) that improves health and wellbeing, tackles poverty and inequalities, and supports prevention and service sustainability?
“We work in a system that is unsustainable, lacks coherence and isn’t delivering the outcomes we need.” (Scottish Government, Care & Wellbeing Portfolio Board, ‘Problem Statement’, May 2022)
“Right now, we face a combination of social and financial challenges never seen in modern times.” (Confederation of Scottish Local Authorities, COSLA, Strategic Plan 2022-27, October 2022)
“Digital exclusion can have a severe impact on people’s lives. For public service reform to be effective it needs to make sure that digitalisation leaves no one behind.” (‘Tackling Digital Exclusion’, Audit Scotland, August 2024)
“Community health and social care faces rising unmet need and managing the crisis is taking priority over prevention due to the multiple pressures facing the bodies providing these services. Action is needed now: IJBs need to share learning to identify and develop service redesign focused on early intervention and prevention.” (‘Integration Joint Boards Finance & Performance’, Audit Scotland, July 2024)
“Health inequalities and the social determinants of health are not a footnote to the determinants of health. They are the main issue. Why treat people and send them back to the conditions that made them sick?” (Sir Michael Marmot, ‘The Health Gap’, Professor of Public Health, UCL)
Local authorities and their whole system partners are faced with the parallel challenges of managing ageing housing stock and supporting ageing populations, both of which drive increasing demand and complexity of response at a time when financial pressures are creating significant service sustainability challenges.
Public service partners across the whole system are under significant demand, capacity, cost, and performance pressures, so the need to focus on housing as a social determinant of health, to shift the balance of care, and to keep people safe, well, and socially connected in their own homes and local communities has never been greater.
Doing nothing is clearly not an option and it’s only by embracing whole system invest to save solutions, funded via integrated and stacked investment cases, that social value and shared outcomes can be accelerated in the face of such demand, capacity, and financial pressures.
The problem statement being addressed by Renfrewshire Council (‘the Council’) was: “How do we enable housing as a social determinant of health to reduce poverty and inequalities and improve outcomes across our whole system, by using technology to change our ways of working, to enable right-time interventions, to reduce costs, to unlock recurring savings, and to allow investment in our strategic priorities?”
As a social landlord the Council was facing multiple drivers for change and the leadership team recognised that solution and commercial innovation was critical to designing and funding affordable and impactful solutions to:
- Reduce Void Losses: The loss of rental and council tax income from social homes when they are empty had to be reduced given increasing financial pressures, so proactive action to maximise income generation was required alongside targeted actions to maximise cost reduction.
- Reduce Homelessness Pressures: Increasing homelessness pressures meant that delays in turning empty properties around, whether via planned re-lets or abandonments, had to be reduced to increase stock utilisation and reduce the time people and families were spending in temporary accommodation waiting for a permanent tenancy.
- Reduce Repairs Costs: The volume and costs of repairs across an ageing social housing portfolio and the volume and costs of disrepair claims were on an upward trend.
Release Productive Time: The volume and complexity of repairs increased repeat visits to properties, calls to the contact centre, and time to assess, plan, and complete repairs all of which creates capacity and productivity challenges. - Prevent Damp & Mould: The Council had to respond to a Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) directive from December 2022 to take proactive action to reduce damp and mould in social homes and evidence early and preventative interventions, this being part of their wider duty to invest in improving the safety and quality of their social homes.
- Improve Energy Efficiency: The combination of targets to reduce carbon emissions and to improve the energy efficiency in social homes, meant that investing in fabric improvements into different home types must be increasingly evidence based to maximise the return on investment for landlords, whilst reducing fuel bills for tenants.
- Reduce Fuel Poverty: Cost of living pressures on social tenants meant that disposable incomes were being squeezed which was having a human and socio-economic impact in Renfrewshire. With fuel costs being a key household outgoing alongside rent and food, there was a pressing need to identify and act on fuel poverty as early as possible.
- Reduce Digital Poverty: Cost of living pressures were a barrier to many social households having connectivity into the home, with reliance on pay as you go tariffs or social tariffs to single devices. Data poverty was common, uptake of social tariffs was low, and too many people and families were prevented from being and staying online, so solutions to addressing digital poverty of all forms were needed.
- Enable Whole System Benefits: As a core partner in an integrated health and social care system the Council was focused on doing all it could to enable safe, efficient, effective, and sustainable services. The Council understood that many of its social tenants had high and complex support needs so any action it could take as landlord to reduce core areas of pressure would have multiplier benefits at a system level, including preventative actions to reduce respiratory pressures into the integrated health and care system.
Figure 1: The Key Drivers for Change
The problems being faced by the Council were therefore multiple, complex, and were converging as simultaneous drivers for change.
The Council understood that investment was needed to change ways of working to enable right-time, right-team, and right-place interventions and to allow benefits to be realised for the Council and for whole system partners, including the Health andSocial Care Partnership (HSCP), given that almost 70% of social tenants were recipients of HSCP services in some localities.
The Council recognised that many of its tenants were part of high-need, high-complaxity, and high-demand groups, and many were at risk of being left behind due to increasing cost of living pressures only compounding the impacts of digital poverty and reinforcing inequalities for more and more families, including their ability to access online information, support assets, and health services such as remote consultation and remote health monitoring solutions.
The council therefore developed an intentional focus on improving the following outcomes:
Figure 2: The Council’s Priority Outcomes
By framing their problem statement at a strategic level, the Council recognised it needed to make investments to improve the health and performance of its housing assets and improve the health and wellbeing of its social tenants in parallel.
Viewing the problem in the right way and turning their converging challenges into an opportunity for driving at-scale improvement was the critical first step in the Council’s journey to making Smart Social Housing (SSH) a reality across Renfrewshire.
Figure 3: The Council’s Needs-Led Go Live Scope
What is the solution to the problem?
An innovative invest to save approach that enables the deployment of a superfast broadband and IoT bundle into 10,000 social homes with the goal of providing this at no or lowest possible cost to tenants, making the unaffordable affordable by building the strongest possible invest to save case for a social investment in at-scale connectivity to improve whole system outcomes and to improve the lives of people and families living in social homes.
The Council recognised the importance of connectivity as a foundation for driving economic growth, unlocking social value, and enabling smart social homes and smart communities for citizens and businesses in Renfrewshire.
The Council was focused on maximising the potential benefits from operating as a social landlord and as a partner in an integrated health and care system, by stepping back and designing solutions and shaping a foundational investment case that would maximise social value across the whole system.
The aim was to accelerate shared strategic priorities by improving the health and wellbeing of social tenants, by tackling poverty and inequalities head-on, and by promoting prevention and service sustainability by enabling right-time, right-team, and right-place support interventions.
Mapping the connectivity infrastructure across Renfrewshire to the portfolio of social assets managed by the Council and whole system partners (social housing, care homes, day care centres, community hubs, schools, +) was a key first step in identifying and prioritising the connectivity gaps to close in terms of the benefits, social value, and financial ROI that could be realised from any investment.
This mapping allowed the Council to prioritise the deployment of superfast broadband into 10,000 social homes at no or lowest possible cost to the tenants, leveraging the investments that had already been made across the connectivity landscape in Renfrewshire and recognising the shared strategic priorities across all whole system partners.
The connectivity would be utilised by the Council to monitor and improve the health of its assets, whilst providing the foundations for deploying needs-led digital solutions into social homes by the Council and its partners. In parallel, given the Council’s focus on recognising housing as a social determinant of health and the increasing regulatory requirement to proactively manage and minimise the impact of damp and mould in social homes, a proposed bundle of broadband and IoT environment monitoring into the 10,000 emerged as the prioritised Go Live scope in Renfrewshire.
Having identified which connectivity gap to close and why (connect social homes at-scale), and having identified a clear rationale for the Go Live digital solution to be part of the Go Live bundle and deployed into the social homes in parallel to the connectivity (IoT environment monitoring sensors), the key question was ‘how do we make it affordable?’
The Council embarked on a process of testing the feasibility of building an invest to save case for deploying the proposed Go Live superfast broadband and IoT sensor bundle at the planned scale.
A portfolio of hypotheses was developed based on the data that was available in the Council, the HSCP, and wider whole system partners, and an iterative approach began to test each hypothesis and to start to build an evidence-base for a viable invest to save business case.
Figure 4: The Council’s Hypotheses Used to Test & Build an Invest to Save Case
The integrity of the invest to save approach was anchored in it being data-driven, evidence-based, and benchmark-validated.
The Council adopted a structured process anchored in problem statements, enabled by agreed hypotheses, informed by activity-based cost models, energised by accelerated user experience and co design sessions, focused on building an invest to save business case, and delivering a repeatable process for stacking next phase invest to save cases to leverage the Go Live investment and multiply benefits and the ROI.
Figure 5: The Structured Process Adopted by the Council to Develop a Repeatable Process
The process was agile and iterative, but is simplified below to represent the key activities and outcomes the Council used to shape and test the hypotheses, to identify and validate benefits, and to build a compelling invest to save business case:
Figure 6: The Iterative 4-Stage Process to Produce an Invest to Save Case
This process allowed the Council to develop a powerful whole system Strategic Case for Change and to start to iteratively build a data-driven and evidence-based invest to save case encompassing a Commercial Case, Financial Case, Socio-Economic Case, and Management Case.
Go/No-Go decision points with the Council leadership team allowed stage-end reviews to be completed and provided the opportunity for the Council to stop, pause, or continue the invest to save analysis.
As at the end of September the Strategic Case is clear, the Commercial Case demonstrates best value, the Socio-Economic Case highlights the potential for significant whole system benefits, and the Management Case highlights the key change readiness considerations, and the Financial Case continues to be refined.
Figure 7 summarises the Go Live solution scope in Renfrewshire which involves the rapid deployment of a bundle of superfast broadband and IoT environment sensors into 10,000 social homes over a 12-month period.
In addition to the financial and socio-economic benefits realised directly from deploying the connectivity and environment sensors at-scale, the superfast broadband alongside the extended LoRaWAN network providing the foundations for stacking additional invest to save cases for the Council and for whole system partners so that next phase invest to save cases can be prioritised and developed.
The full potential and strategic impact of smart social housing (SSH) is therefore realised in future phases by leveraging the connectivity investment already made into social homes and across local communities, allowing the benefits and the ROI to be multiplied.
Figure 7: Invest to Save Social Investment as the Foundation for Smart Social Housing & Smart Communities
The Strategic Case for investing in smart social housing (SSH) was self-evident given the strategic priorities and outcomes articulated and targeted in the Council’s strategy, the Health & Social Care Partnership’s (HSCP) strategy, and the Community Planning Partnership’s (CPP) strategy.
The Council understood the pressures across the whole system and the leadership team recognised their role as a social landlord allowed them to shape at-scale connectivity and digital investments into their assets that would deliver whole system benefits and financial ROI for all partners, as well as unlocking significant benefits for social tenants.
The Council recognised it was in a position to make a foundational social investment by providing connectivity into their social homes to improve the health and performance of their assets and improve the health and wellbeing of their tenants.
This investment would help accelerate the Council’s strategic priorities and would provide a springboard for accelerating strategic priorities for its whole system partners.
Figure 8: A Foundational Social Investment to Stack Next Phase Invest to Save Cases
Commercial model (Business Case)
Building an invest to save business case for deploying a connectivity and IoT environment bundle into 10,000 social homes with the aim to realise recurring savings that cover the ongoing revenue costs of a managed connectivity and IoT data analytics service.
The Council’s ambition to invest in at-scale connectivity as an enabler for transforming services and improving lives, led to them awarding a 20-year strategic ‘connectivity as a service’ (CaaS) framework to Commsworld as its strategic connectivity partner in 2020.
This partnership focused on providing enhanced connectivity into more than 180 Council buildings and providing a future-proofed infrastructure for strategic investments, including in smart social housing and smart communities across Renfrewshire.
The benefits of this strategic partnership were quickly realised via a £50M private investment from City Fibre who has now laid over 500KM of full fibre beneath the streets of Renfrewshire, increasing fibre coverage from less than 15% to over 90% in the past 5 years, making Renfrewshire one of the best connected local authorities in Scotland.
The strategic nature of the CaaS framework, it’s focus on at-scale solutions, and the long-term partnership arrangement with Commsworld provided the commercial platform for attracting inward investment that is now being leveraged via the smart social housing (SSH) investment.
The smart social housing Commercial Case is therefore built on these strategic, scale, and duration foundations, which allow best value pricing to be offered to the Council.
The Council had already invested in IoT environment sensors to measure temperature, humidity, and CO2, these being deployed and fully active in 576 of the Council’s 12,305 social homes.
Whilst COVID impacted on the Council’s ability to transform their ways of working using the actionable insights provided by the IoT data, there was a recognition that the benefits potential could be significant, especially if the sensors were deployed at-scale rather than via a limited test of change, to allow ways of working to be transformed at-scale and to become the new business as usual.
In sizing the benefits, the Council was able to utilise the data captured from the 576 sensors for a full 12- month period and map this to the housing repairs activity, volume, and cost data over the same period. Additional analysis provided comfort that the 576 homes were a representative sample across the archetypes in the Council’s social housing portfolio.
This allowed the Council to build a data-led and evidence-based model for sizing the recurring savings potential from deploying the IoT environment monitoring at-scale, with the savings being driven by the sensors providing actionable insights to enable early intervention to prevent an escalation in the complexity and cost or repairs.
This financial case analysis is ongoing, but it’s clear that early intervention can have a significant impact in reducing costs of repairs relating to damp and mould, as the escalation in complexity and costs can be rapid.
Figure 9: Escalation in the Complexity & Cost of Damp, Mould & Fabric Issues
The Council’s business case is based on a number of foundations that impact on both the Commercial Case (The Cost) and the Financial Case (The Savings).
These are key considerations for scaling the invest to save model in other council areas or into housing associations:
- Connectivity Maturity: The maturity of the existing connectivity infrastructure was relatively high in Renfrewshire given their strategic focus on connectivity as a core enabler for service transformation and improving lives, this successfully attracting private investment and providing a connectivity foundation to build from.
- Strategic Framework: The CaaS framework provides a strategic vehicle for developing a long-term contract, so the ability to shape an at-scale smart social housing (SSH) model was possible, whilst the duration allowed best value pricing to be offered.
- IoT Evidence Base: The Council was able to harness the existing IoT insights and map this to their housing repairs activity, volume, and cost data as the basis for sizing the savings potential and building the Financial Case.
- Operational Maturity: As with any business case, the potential to drive savings from deploying digital solutions depends on the As-Is maturity of the operational functions and processes to be improved. The savings identified and incorporated into the Council’s business case are therefore not directly transferrable into other operational contexts.
Benefits and Learning
Creating a viable invest to save case by demonstrating the Financial Case will deliver sufficient cashable savings, the Socio-Economic Case will drive social value across the whole system, and the investment in the connectivity foundations will provide the foundation for multiplying benefits and the ROI via future phase investments.
The Council’s focus on enabling smart social housing (SSH) at-scale in Renfrewshire is driven by the benefits and strategic outcomes it will enable for tenants, the Council, the HSCP and other whole system partners.
The Strategic Case for change is powerful as the social value created across the whole system could be significant if the connectivity into 10,000 social homes is leveraged to multiply benefits.
Figure 10: Summary of Benefits Areas from the Smart Social Housing Investment
It is by leveraging the connectivity investment that future phase invest to save cases can be stacked to multiply wider benefits for whole system partners. This includes providing the foundations for deploying needs-led digital solutions into social homes to keep people safe, well, and socially connected and ultimately to shift the balance of care and reduce demand and cost pressures across the health and care system.
Figure 11: Benefits Enabled across the Health & Care System by Shifting the Balance of Care
The smart social housing benefits engagement has already been the catalyst for the design of a Smart Care Home in Renfrewshire, so the full potential for smart places alongside smart social housing is already being explored and the opportunities to leverage benefits are already being identified.
The hypotheses-led approach involved a data-driven and evidence-based approach to testing, validating, and prioritising areas where savings could be achieved. The Council was able to use its own sensor data and repairs log data as evidence in building this savings profile, with the analysis continuing as the savings and benefits cases are challenged.
The key areas of savings focus identified to date are summarised below:
- Damp & Mould Repairs: Reduce the expenditure on damp and mould repairs by proactively monitoring properties to identify and act on any condensation, damp, and mould issues as early as possible, to avoid increased repairs complexity and costs. Rot
- Works Repairs: Reduce the number and complexity of rot works repairs by intervening early, and by closely monitoring void properties where rot issues can quickly develop if homes are empty, without heating, and more prone to disrepair.
- Void Income Losses: Reduce the rental income lost when properties are empty and waiting to be let by identifying abandonments early, by proactively managing properties so there are no major fabric repair surprises when access to properties is secured, and by minimising further disrepair whilst the property is empty which only delays the relet process.
- Contact Centre Costs: Reduce the inbound and outbound call traffic to/from the contact centre linked to repairs activities and provide the opportunity to release time and release costs by reviewing contact centre WTE requirements. General Repairs
- Costs: Instil a continuous improvement culture, supported by actionable insights, across all housing management processes to unlock wider savings, including improving first time repairs success, driving best value from 3rd party contractors, and identifying critical fabric issues earlier such as broken windows or leaks.
- Asset-Centred Investments: Drive best value and maximise the ROI from the different investments being made into housing assets in terms of planned maintenance, reactive repairs, net zero interventions, and energy efficiency interventions; providing investment impact intelligence across different house archetypes. Public Liability &
- Disrepair Claims: Reduce the compliance, reputational, and tenant health risks from mould, whilst reducing exposure to liability claims, disrepair claims, and class actions.
- Insurance Premiums: Reduce insurance premiums across social housing portfolios by demonstrating the proactive management of assets to improve their health and performance and reduce the risk of disrepair.
There are key areas of learning that can be shared from the Council’s experience in developing an invest to save business case. The insights from the existing deployment of environment sensors in 576 homes, combined with the savings potential identified by mapping this data to the Council’s master repairs log, provides data-driven and evidence-based intelligence to inform the development of business cases in other organisations.
As a minimum this includes insights on the benefits of deploying IoT environment sensors alongside connectivity given the early warning alerts provided, the right-time responses enabled, and the proactive monitoring in hot spot areas that can be activated:
Figure 12: The Potential Benefits from Intelligent Alerting, Right-Time Responses, & Proactive Monitoring
Smart social housing (SSH) is not about deploying IoT in social homes, it is about the connectivity foundations that allow a portfolio of needs-led digital solutions to be deployed into social homes to unlock asset-centred benefits, person-centred benefits, and benefits for whole system partners.
IoT environment monitoring was prioritised as part of the Go Live bundle due to the strategic and regulatory drivers in Renfrewshire, but other smart solutions could have been deployed in parallel with the connectivity foundations to support the initial invest to save case. The Go Live scope will always be driven by the local strategic context.
Figure 13: Connectivity Provides the Foundation for Deploying Needs-Led Digital Solutions into Social Homes
There are therefore key areas of learning that can be shared from the Council’s strategic focus on connectivity and the enabling commercial context that was put in place as foundations for investing in smart social housing.
Conclusion
Renfrewshire Council recognised the strategic need to invest in at-scale connectivity as a social foundation for accelerating whole system benefits by enabling social tenants to be kept safe, well, and socially connected in their own homes.
Given its financial context, the Council wanted to test whether an invest to save approach could be developed to release sufficient savings, so its social investment pays for itself as far as possible, helping to make the unaffordable affordable, whilst providing the platform for stacking next phase invest to save cases to unlock additional benefits and maximise the ROI from the foundational investment.
The Council’s approach is highly innovative in commercial, technology, and methodology terms. Whilst the invest to save case continues to be refined, the approach is already proven as one that can be replicated at scale across the UK, hence the rationale in sharing the in-flight story to date
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