Social Housing Innovation North East (of which Believe Housing is a member) was Highly Commended in the Innovation category of the Housing Technology Awards 2026.
In social housing, insight is often held in different places by different providers. At Social Housing Innovation North East (Shine), we saw the opportunity to connect it to improve outcomes for our member organisations, customers and communities. By pooling our data, our insight and our ambition, we set out to build a shared GIS platform that could give us a single, intelligent view of the places we collectively serve.
The result is OneMap – a regional mapping tool designed to not only visualise homes but also unlock opportunities. It allows housing providers to collaborate more effectively, target investment where it will have the greatest impact and support better outcomes for tens of thousands of residents across the region. OneMap is already changing how we work and we’ve only just started.
Unifying the North East’s housing intelligence
Before OneMap existed, every housing provider in our region held valuable data but held it separately. Property condition information, EPC ratings, build year, home type, ASB patterns, demographics, flood risk data and climate hazards all sat in different systems, in different formats and were analysed in different ways.
Although each organisation held rich insights, it wasn’t connected in a way that allowed anyone to see the wider picture across our shared communities. By bringing this intelligence together, we recognised the potential to target services more effectively, support neighbourhood improvements, make efficiencies and deliver better outcomes for customers. The opportunity wasn’t simply to combine data but to unlock a clearer, more collaborative understanding of ‘place’ that would help us make smarter, more joined-up decisions.
A shared ambition & a shared solution
In 2023, housing professionals from across the North East of England came together to form Shine, a forum created to reduce duplication, challenge established ways of working and share ideas that improve outcomes for our respective customers and communities.
The idea for OneMap emerged during an early Shine event where the need for shared tools and shared data became apparent. Believe Housing, Bernicia Group, Darlington Borough Council, Gentoo Group, Karbon Homes, North Star Housing, Places for People and Thirteen Group have been jointly involved in establishing and shaping OneMap, building it on trust, openness and the shared belief that innovation works best when done together rather than in isolation.
GIS specialists formed a dedicated working group to shape the platform, agreeing data-sharing protocols and designing the core architecture. OneMap uses Esri’s ArcGIS technology, enabling us to manage complex spatial data at scale and draw on open source and partner-owned datasets within a single system.
£5,000 investment…
In less than 18 months and with a combined investment of under £5,000, a five-day prototype was developed into a fully-functioning regional GIS tool. This pace of development was more than technical success – it demonstrated what is possible when barriers come down and organisations collaborate with a shared purpose.
OneMap brings together property-level detail such as EPC ratings, build year and home type with environmental, social and demographic layers including deprivation, ASB, flood risk and climate hazards. Combined, this creates a powerful shared understanding of the communities we collectively serve.
Investments & interventions
The platform is already enabling better-coordinated investment planning. OneMap is being used to coordinate multi-provider investment programmes, particularly in areas where multiple housing providers operate within a single estate. In other areas, a pilot employability project led by Believe Housing, Bernicia, Karbon Homes and North Star Housing is using OneMap to identify areas where women aged 50 to 65 are most likely to be out of work, using deprivation and health data to guide funding bids and outreach. The platform is also helping with early interventions; by highlighting three child poverty hotspots, OneMap has helped direct support to the areas where it will have the greatest impact.
Alongside this, we have created a unified regional dataset through data-sharing agreements across eight founder members, now expanded to 10 organisations representing 78 per cent (approx. 150,000 properties) of the region’s social homes.
For technology professionals in housing, OneMap demonstrates the power of a collaborative, scalable architecture capable of supporting predictive analytics, smarter decision-making and stronger data governance.
Game-changing collaboration
From the outset, OneMap was more than a mapping tool; it represented a cultural shift. By agreeing shared standards, establishing trusted data-sharing arrangements and developing a common GIS language, we unlocked far more than technical capability. We have created a regional ecosystem in which knowledge flows freely and where housing providers at different stages of their digital journeys can access advanced insights.
OneMap enables our members to use powerful GIS tools even without in‑house specialists, creating a levelling effect that strengthens the sector. This is digital inclusion in action, not just for residents but for housing providers as well.
Predictive, preventative & region‑wide
We see OneMap evolving into a predictive tool that supports climate-resilience planning, building-safety analysis, regeneration strategies and the earlier identification of vulnerabilities or risks. As more datasets flow into the platform and more organisations join us, its potential will continue to grow.
More importantly, OneMap captures what Shine set out to do from the beginning: to use collaboration and shared intelligence to improve homes, services and community outcomes. It proves that when housing providers innovate together, the impact multiplies.
If you would like to learn more about OneMap or the work of Shine, we are very happy to share information and speak with anyone interested in our approach. Please visit weareshine.net or linkedin.com/company/social-housing-innovation-north-east for details.
Lynsey Darby is a GIS specialist at Believe Housing (part of Social Housing Innovation North East). Shine’s group of housing providers was Highly Commended in the Innovation category at the Housing Technology Awards 2026.
