About Nesta

Nesta is an innovation foundation. For us, innovation means turning bold ideas into reality and changing lives for the better. We use our expertise, skills and funding in areas where there are big challenges facing society.

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In A sustainable future

Developing support interventions for social housing tenants with heat pumps

This project started in October 2023 and ended in July 2024

Improving tenant experiences of heat pumps to improve their confidence in using low-carbon technologies.

The Optimised Retrofit Programme (ORP) in Wales, initiated by the Welsh Government, focuses on installing green upgrades in social housing, including heat pumps. Despite its positive intent, some heat pump installations have led to tenant dissatisfaction, prompting complaints and increased support needs. These negative experiences pose a barrier to scaling heat pump adoption within social housing and beyond. Nesta, in collaboration with social housing providers and Sero, aimed to improve tenant experiences and address challenges associated with the ORP.

Impact goal

The project sought to enhance the social housing tenants’ experiences of heat pumps, fostering greater acceptance and understanding of this low-carbon heating technology. By co-designing, prototyping, and testing scalable support interventions, the goal was to generate valuable insights that could be applied within the social housing sector and potentially extended to private tenures.

Why did we do this?

By leveraging our expertise in user testing, behavioural science and design, we were aiming to enhance tenant engagement and satisfaction. Social landlords, while focusing on ORP measures, often struggle with consistent tenant engagement. Nesta's research, behavioural science and design capabilities can provide proven interventions, aiding social landlords in prioritising tenant needs and experiences.

What did we do?

In collaboration with Sero and social housing providers, Nesta attempted to engage with social housing tenants in Wales who have heat pumps installed under the ORP. Our planned approach involved understanding tenant perspectives, co-designing solutions and testing interventions directly with the tenants. The anticipated interventions would focus on building confidence in using heating controls and clarifying the differences between heat pump systems and combi-boilers. Additionally, we wanted to explore a concept called the 'retrofit pathway', breaking down the journey to net-zero carbon into manageable stages to enhance householders' confidence and capability over time.

We were not able to identify a partner to work with on this project so we will look at identifying new projects that could support this area of work. If you are working in social housing and would like to talk to us about low-carbon heating please get in touch.