Date published: 03 November 2025
Leading housing provider, Stonewater, has played a key role in a major new research project that could revolutionise the way social housing is managed and maintained across the UK.
The report, If Homes Could Talk, launched by the Disruptive Innovators Network (DIN) in collaboration with Bromford Flagship, explores why connected home technologies – such as sensors that detect damp, faults, or boiler issues – are not yet widely adopted across the sector, despite their potential to improve tenant wellbeing and reduce repair costs.
As one of the key partners in the project, the leading housing provider helped shape the research, which draws on interviews with landlords, tenant workshops, supplier insights and practical design work.
Bromford Flagship and Stonewater were joined in the research by Amazon, Aster, Livv Housing Group, Yorkshire Housing and Sanctuary.
The findings highlight the barriers preventing smart home technology from scaling beyond pilot projects, including:
- An over-reliance on pilot projects with no clear path to scale
- A lack of strategic ownership of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies
- Disconnected data and unclear accountability across teams
- Low resident engagement and risks of digital exclusion
- A fragmented supplier market with closed-system architectures
- A cultural tendency to “break and fix” rather than “predict and prevent”
It also sets out 30 practical recommendations for landlords, suppliers and policymakers, including:
- Making connected homes part of core business strategy
- Redesigning services around prediction and prevention
- Rebuilding procurement to reward openness and outcomes
- Empowering residents to control their data and experience
- Training staff to work with predictive data
- Creating clear pathways from sensor data to real-world action
Gareth Lloyd, Chief Information and Transformation Officer at Stonewater, said: “We’re proud to have contributed to this important research. At Stonewater, we believe that connected technology has the power to transform social housing by preventing problems before they happen, improving the customer experience, and helping us deliver more efficient, proactive services.
“But to make this a reality, we need to embed these tools into our core strategies, not treat them as one-off experiments.”
Matthew Gardiner, DIN Associate Director and co-author of the report, said:
“The technology works; the challenge is cultural, organisational and systemic. We need to shift from trialling gadgets to building real, predictive housing infrastructure.
“By embedding connected technology into the core of housing services - not as an add-on - landlords can move from reacting to problems to predicting and preventing them. A smart sensor that detects a boiler fault before it breaks can save hundreds in repair costs - and even more importantly, prevent hardship for a tenant.”
The full report and executive summary are available here: https://disruptiveinnovatorsnetwork.co.uk/if-homes-could-talk/
