Our approach to realising Social Value

Social Value is an umbrella term for capturing the value an organisation provides to society and, from Vericon’s perspective, it is the measurement of the nonfinancial outcomes that can be created by a social housing provider by enhanced asset management. As social housing organisations look to demonstrate performance against net-zero goals and impact through Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) funds, the use of connected technology will continue to play a key role. By utilising connected technology organisations can evidence the impact they make not only to delivery wider and societal agendas, but to better understand and support tenants to deliver these wider agendas. To support this journey, better data on both assets, tenants, and how they interact to provide the best and most sustainable living environments will rely on connected IoT technology.

UK Social Value Bank

The UK Social Value Bank remains the largest bank of methodologically consistent values that exists and has become widely regarded as a ‘standard’ methodology within the sector. The Social Value Bank covers a broad range of interventions, focusing on those areas of activity particularly of interest to UK housing providers: including, environmental, health, financial inclusion and the built environment. By measuring the social value created, the impact an intervention or initiative is having on people and communities, it enables better and more informed decisions about how improving services, with increased positive results. There is huge potential and increasing demand for social value information to be used to enhance and deliver the social purpose of social housing organisations.

Approach

Vericon have created a complete Ecosystem of IoT sensor devices which allow housing associations to monitor, manage and maintain their assets remotely. The system is completely independent of any current infrastructure so will not rely on, for instance, a tenant’s internet connection

The Ecosystem and its reporting have the potential to create improvements in the following areas that align to the wellbeing measurements within the UK Social Value bank

• Able to obtain advice locally

• Improvements in overall health

• Feel in control of life

• Afford to keep house well-decorated

• Able to pay for heating

• Energy efficiency improved

• Rectification of serious condensation/mould growth

• Rectification of penetrating (higher level) damp

• Satisfaction with how the landlord maintains and repairs the home

• Number of tenancies provided

Our collaborative approach can support the collection of evidence to measure the increase in wellbeing. These outcomes may include efficiency savings, better management of assets and cost reductions to the tenant and the state.

Data or Insight

There are a growing number of companies accumulating data from their IoT devices but the data itself will not help to deliver the potential value to the sector. The use of disparate systems, although may meet specific requirements, will have a limited impact on delivering social value.

Vericon’s approach, to create a local isolated network within a property offers a scalable solution allowing a range of current and future devices to connect and communicate to its cloud based intelligence, Connect. Connect will interrogate the data from all the sensors within a specific property, across a property architype or even a socioeconomic background of a tenant. Without using any personal information, Connect can help to identify risk and potential social value propositions.

Additional benefits

There are, of course, other benefits the Vericon system will afford its adopters such as improved operational efficiencies, extended asset lifecycle, improved labour management and recruitment, reduce helpdesk interaction, whilst retaining a full audit trail for governance.

“It has been clear from our Launchpad partnership with Vericon, that we have a shared vision around the implementation of technology in social housing properties, and the importance that this can have on tenants’ lives. Through the Vericon Ecosystem the ability to better support and understand the lives of social housing tenants is not only increased, but can provide the basis to start evidencing the impact of this support”

Michael McLaughlin, Digital Lead HACT

HACT

Vericon have partnered with HACT for the last 18 months and one of the areas which we have developed together, is tenant outcomes remaining central to all technology implementations within a social housing setting.

Their recent blog post highlighted this very principle - here

Social Value Evaluation

HACT can work with social housing organisations who use Vericon technology as part of the UK Social Value Bank metrics, to help develop and evaluate the social value approach and measurements this has created for their tenants. They will ensure organisations are getting the most out of their technology implementation and use, and help evidence impact and improvements of services.