Social housing providers and providers of social housing provide offer much-needed affordable homes for rent across the UK, as well as undertaking large-scale development in areas of high-population growth and where a lack of affordable housing is available, such as London.
Social housing is responsible for the largest number of heat networks and private utility networks across the UK, often including some of the oldest networks, such as those installed in sheltered housing.
Social housing has also pioneered novel and innovative approaches to heat networks, establishing dedicated teams and even companies to take on the challenge associated with operating heat networks.
Challenges Faced
The most widespread challenge across the social housing sector relates to knowledge and skills, which is often centered in larger cities where heat networks and private utility networks have been growing at the fastest rate.
At the same time the number of heat networks have grown, so have the challenges that they have presented; such as closed-protocol systems, insufficient maintenance, debt risk and inefficiencies, over-heating and design issues.
Often social housing providers are pulled in many directions, just one of which is now being a utility supplier. This provides a challenge to balance social and financial aims, recovering costs and providing a fair, low-cost utility.
Sycous Solutions
The full range of Sycous products and solutions is suitable for different applications relating to social housing.
Our Metering and Data Collection hardware is designed to be open-protocol allowing it to be operated in-house using software such as our Mabdeck Software, as well as by any service provider, including through our Customer Billing Services.
Many social housing providers look towards the flexibility of our PAYG solutions to minimise debt risk, which have the added benefit of addressing maintenance, design and inefficiency concerns.
Whether looking at new-build or retrofit projects, our Installation services can prove invaluable to social housing providers, making sure they get a future-proofed solution from day one, as well as compliant solutions with the Heat Network (Metering and Billing) Regulations 2014.
Finally, all solutions need maintaining, whether its responsive or planned and Sycous offer both as part of our Maintain solution. This ensures expert maintenance is carried out to maximise useful life and minimise long-term maintenance costs
