Improving housing management to enhance health outcomes

Overview

Leeds City Council and City of York Council are committed to providing housing of the right quality, type, tenure and affordability. The councils understand that good quality housing has associated health and well-being benefits.

The councils want to know if new technological solutions can help effectively monitor environmental conditions within housing stock and provide information to tenants. This could help influence behaviour change and improve their health and well-being.

Scope

The solution you propose must:

• help the councils improve how they monitor environmental factors and schedule maintenance
• provide exception reporting and predictive modelling
• improve the health and well-being of council tenants
• enable tenants to make environmental and lifestyle changes to improve the condition of their home and their own health and well-being
• be non-intrusive

You should consider:

• how Internet of Things (IOT) technology might be used
• how health referrals might trigger proactive housing interventions and how could this be achieved in a system that is not currently joined up
• how the councils can understand which behaviour patterns lead to requests for property maintenance or create health conditions, and act on this insight
• whether making users aware of the impact of their actions results in behaviour change
• what an end to end solution which joins up and integrates with existing systems would look like

You must:

• be innovative and be prepared to test new ideas, approaches, methodologies, tools or techniques
• have a clear plan for establishing technical and commercial feasibility and the development of a working prototype
• have appropriate skills, capabilities and experience, within your organisation or your subcontractors’ organisations, to deliver the project
• have a budget that is realistic and justified for aims and methods proposed
• validate ideas to focus on testable prototypes for phase 1 (the competition is not looking for production ready code)
• demonstrate a route to commercialise the developed product

Eligibility

To lead a project, you can:

• be an organisation, of any size
• work alone or with others as subcontractors (businesses, research base or third sector)

You must be prepared to spend time in Leeds and York working with local authorities and tenants.

Your project must start on 5 August 2019 and last up to 3 months.

Funding Costs

Phase 1: 

The first phase involves research and development contracts being awarded to demonstrate technical feasibility of the proposed solution.

A total of up to £250,000, including VAT, is allocated to phase 1. It is anticipated the feasibility study R&D contracts will be up to £50,000, including VAT, for each project for up to 3 months.

It is expected that phase 1 will fund up to 5 projects.

Applications led by a sector specialist, or including sector specialists among the subcontractors are welcomed.

Phase 2:

The second phase involves up to 2 R&D contracts being awarded to businesses chosen from the successful phase 1 applicants.

Up to £500,000, including VAT will be allocated for each contract, in order to develop a prototype and undertake field testing for up to 12 months.

Please note, this competition is for Phase 1 only. A decision to proceed with Phase 2 will depend on the outcomes from Phase 1.

Exclusions

This competition will not fund projects that:

• do not comply with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requirements
• do not a have a technological aspect
• do not meet the requirements outlined in the scope
• do not show a clear route to market