At the beginning of July, we hosted our first Housing Technology Live session, The Power of Data, with the simple yet important theme of how housing providers can get more value from their data by focusing on where it starts.
Over 120 people from across the sector joined us live on our dedicated Streamyard event platform, from local authorities and housing associations to government organisations and technology partners.
As everyone knows, data management is a huge topic, so for Housing Technology Live – The Power of Data, we chose to start at the beginning, with data at the point of entry – where it’s collected, recorded and first brought into housing providers’ systems.
Too often, we jump straight to the ‘downstream’ technologies and outputs, such as dashboards, predictions and automation, but what came through loud and clear from our speakers from Aspire Housing and Southway Housing was that if your data isn’t right at the start, everything that follows is unreliable and therefore unusable.
The cost of poor data entry
Yannick Daclinat from Southway Housing began by looking at the cost of poor data entry. He showed how small errors, such as a mistyped address or an unvalidated heating system record, don’t just affect individual records, they distort compliance reporting, skew financial forecasts and erode operational confidence.
Daclinat then demonstrated how Southway Housing is addressing those problems by validating its data at the point of entry, using consistency ‘guardrails’, automation and smart rules, and putting accountability into the hands of the people who enter the data in the first place.
Machine learning for no-access visits
Helen Portman and Lyndsey Whittingham from Aspire Housing then took us through their own journey, from cleansing legacy repairs data to experimenting with machine-learning models to reduce no-access gas visits.
What stood out was how carefully they had framed the work, and in particular how they weren’t chasing AI for the sake of it but as a tool to provide answers to a finely-analysed, real-world problem.
It was clear from our guests’ comments that many housing providers and local authorities are grappling with the same core problem as Aspire Housing and Southway Housing – they want to move forward with data but their foundations aren’t yet solid.
What to do next
If you’re reading this and thinking, “that’s us”, then now is a good time to act. Start small by focusing on your data-entry points because when your data is right from the start, everything downstream becomes easier, faster and more accurate.
Here’s what we’d suggest as some next steps:
- Download Housing Technology’s ‘Data Standards in Housing 2025’ report – Published in partnership with the UK government’s Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government, HACT and Open Data Exchange, get our free report to find out what your peers are doing with shared/open data standards across the sector.
- Register for future Housing Technology Live sessions – Our next online event will focus on AI in housing (incl. machine learning, RPA and NLP).
- Reserve your place at Data Matters 2025 – Taking place on 16 September in central London, our one-day event will cover all aspects of data in social housing, with a very timely emphasis on data standards alongside AI.
- Please visit housing-technology.com for all of the above.
Thank you again to everyone who joined us for Housing Technology Live, and to Yannick Daclinat, Helen Portman and Lyndsey Whittingham for being so open with their experiences.
George Grant is the CEO, publisher and co-founder of Housing Technology.
