PORTFOLIO
Our market-leading housing stock assessment tool helps Registered Providers and private landlords design and implement strategic retrofit programmes for their housing stock.
Portfolio is used by the landlords of over 1.5 million homes across the UK, in all sectors of the market.
By using all available property data and looking beyond the EPC to all potential measures, and combinations of measures, that can be applied in a home, Portfolio develops cost-effective retrofit programmes, deliverable over time, at an affordable price.
Coastline Housing Ltd recognises the importance of high quality data and the assessment of best options of energy related improvements for each home. Working with Parity Projects we have been able to develop significant plans in terms of our approach to stock improvement and were impressed with the Portfolio process. In particular it helped us identify the realistic potential of the stock in terms of energy efficiency. It reports on the likely costs of improvements which has allowed sensible targets to be agreed for energy improvement and customer household savings. The Parity team are an extremely knowledgeable and experienced group of professionals who worked well with our company representatives throughout this project, and we are extremely pleased with the results of this approach to intelligence-led asset management.
Mark England
Coastline Housing
We used the Portfolio system to collate a programme of works for our bid for the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund (SHDF) Wave 1. The system allowed us to identify our worst performing properties in line with the bid requirements, and run a scenario of the required fabric measures. We have been notified that our bid has been successful. We thank Parity for their help, the system has allowed us to successfully identify properties for the bid, and 364 of our homes will now benefit from energy efficiency measures.
Joshua Arthur
Gravesham Borough Council
Catalyst has found Portfolio data useful, playing a role in our submission for accreditation where we became the first company in Europe to receive the highest accreditation mark across all three categories in the ‘Certified Sustainable Housing Label’ from German consultancy RITTERWALD.
Stephen Edwards
Catalyst
Parity Projects enabled us to get a much better handle on the efficiency of our stock and the investment required to improve it. Now we have the ability to prioritise and target funding on the properties that need it the most.
Victoria Moore
The Guiness Partnership
Portfolio is a vital tool in Clarion’s approach to asset management and it underpins our energy efficiency investment programme.
Daniel Archard
Clarion
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.
Liz Blackwell
L&Q
Optivo aims to eliminate fuel poverty for its customers through a combination of improving the energy performance of the stock and providing energy advice to help with payments and heating settings. Parity Projects’ Portfolio tool helps by giving us the big picture needed for strategic decisions and the detail needed to plan and deliver individual projects.
Oliver Bell
Optivo
The outputs from Portfolio have been instrumental in our ECO negotiations. Its quantifiable outputs got suppliers interested and eventually led to three competitive quotes for funding much of our capital works programme. It has also highlighted how we should change our programme to maximise the funding
Noel Brosnan
Octavia Housing
“Portfolio has been a key tool in our net zero strategy. Understanding the potential programme costs and the comparative cost per property have been fundamental building blocks on our net zero journey. The team provides very supportive after sales support as well.”
Dr Rob Ashby
Trafford Housing Trust
Portfolio has enabled us to review the SAP levels of all stock, and estimate the homes’ energy bills. It identifies opportunities for improvement and also the best value improvement measures to raise performance. Portfolio has been very important in the process of informing our budgetary decisions and helping us to plan works for the coming years.
Frances Crick
Cheltenham Borough Homes
Portfolio helped us to understand the strategic energy performance of our homes and the high level information we needed to develop our business case. This was strengthened by having the functionality to give data a confidence rating so that we can see where it needs improvement. The service now helps us to identify projects for our delivery programme so that our stock investment team can plan long term delivery.
Andrew Piper
Hyde Housing
Profile stock
Report on properties with given characteristics, such as poor loft insulation or inefficient boilers, or report against targets.
Visualise data
Use data visualisation to quickly identify opportunities and challenges, and develop and communicate programmes.
Optimise action
Test the impact of 3000 options for each property to optimise the route to your carbon, SAP, heat demand and/or affordability target.
Data confidence
Understand and manage data quality to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of intervention programmes.
API
Available to Asset Management Systems to access the powerful Portfolio recommendation engine and support mutual clients.
Software AND a Service
Parity Projects provides support through a designated data analyst, regular training updates and a quarterly user group.FAQ
How does the service add value?
Clients have reported the following benefits:
- Identify the least cost route to their decarbonisation goals.
- Deliver efficiencies by embedding retrofit in other planned works.
- Turn voids into an opportunity to get deep retrofit done.
- Respond quickly to funding opportunities.
- Improve data quality and reduce contract variations.
How much does the service cost?
What data do you require from the housing provider?
Why do you use RdSAP?
We use the Government’s RdSAP method to calculate the benefit of different measures for three reasons:
- it relates directly to Government policy;
- we have found it to be reliable in the recommendation of measures; and
- it is cost-effective.
We are aware of, and manage, limitations. Our model considers the impact of the decarbonisation of the grid on carbon emissions, considers up to 3000 variations on measures for every home, and tests every relevant combination using current market prices.
Our data visualisations help housing providers identify gaps in data and outliers that indicate other potential data issues, which can inform the quality assurance of future surveys. We continue to feed into Government consultations and thinking about its ongoing development, and are particularly keen to see consideration of ventilation needs and adaptation, as recommended by the Committee on Climate Change.
Can you help deliver decarbonisation and address fuel poverty?
Yes. Our scenario testing nests your targets so they can deliver on multiple requirements. Criteria include SAP ratings, EI, fuel bill, kWh, kWh/m2 and CO2 savings. The last of these can be tested against the Government’s different Grid decarbonisation scenarios to understand the implications of electrifying heat.
There is of course the unknown of future energy prices – we advise on how this can be handled by balancing demand reduction with the electrification of heat.
Can Portfolio provide a strategic plan for decarbonising housing stock?
Yes. Our tools are designed to provide you with the big picture, drawing on property level detail. Until 2018 we delivered strategy advice in the form of a one-off report. We developed our online tools in response to client feedback – they found the report useful but only needed to read it once. What they really wanted was to then use the data generated to start moving towards delivery. We therefore now provide a light-touch report with the tool putting more focus on putting resulting strategy into action.
We work with a number of consultants who can provide additional advice on commercial buildings, fleet and the governance of decarbonisation across your organisation.
Do you provide advice on decarbonising commercial buildings and fleet?
No. Parity Projects does not advise on decarbonising commercial buildings and fleet. We work with a number of partners who can incorporate our outputs to provide a cross-organisation view of the potential for decarbonisation.
How many users can access the system?
We do not set a limit on the logins for each client, they can select who they give access to their data , whether staff or contractors with related user rights.
How can I track my performance?
Portfolio offers two relevant reports: progress reporting and benchmarking.
All users can see their progress over time, in terms of energy performance metrics and the quality of their data. We report both, as improving the quality of data may affect the reported energy performance of homes and so it is worth viewing them concurrently.
We offer benchmarking to users who consent to use of their data for this purpose, and this has been taken up by nearly half our client base to date. Users view the energy performance of their homes in comparison with other anonymised users. We understand there are systemic reasons why some landlords report better energy performance than others, so it is not a league table, but can be used to understand what is happening in the sector and prompt discussion about the reason for the user’s relative performance.