Why social landlords need to think seriously about smart meters

One important point is that even if poor work could have dramatic knock on impacts and the success stories could help reduce tenants’ bills, there is no obligation for social landlords to get involved in installation.

“The direct contractual relationship would be with the customer,” says Simon Storey, director of energy services for Spark Energy, a utility which specialises in supplying to tenants in the private and social rented sectors.

“If the tenant is the bill payer they are entitled to have a smart meter and don’t have to apply for permission from their landlord,” says John MacNeil, head of policy and communications Scotland for Smart Energy GB, the government body that has been set up to facilitate the meters roll out.

While there is no obligation on social landlords to have smart meters installed in their properties, it is widely seen as good practice.

“The onus is on the industry to roll out smart meters but this is something they would do as good landlords,” says Lewis Taylor, managing director of Energy Angels, which specialises in arranging installations for social landlords, including the WM group.

Chris Thomson, head of assets at Castle Rock Edinvar Housing Association, agrees: “We advise tenants that it’s a good idea and every household should have one.”

A key opportunity to install easily and on-scale happens during the relet process.

For many social landlords, such work has become standard practice when properties are void. With an annual tenancy turnover rate of 8%, Mr Thomson says that it should be possible to install smart meters across a big chunk of Castle Rock’s properties within a relatively short period. Already, he says that smart meters have been installed in 400 of the registered provider’s 8,000-plus properties while they were void.

Mr MacNeil says that exploiting the void period cuts down the proportion of tenants who need to be encouraged to have one of the devices installed.

And it avoids one of the big bugbears of smart meter process: having to stay in while it is put in, he adds: “It means no waiting for an appointment or the potential for the tenant to forget and be out and the work not being done properly.”

For the landlord meanwhile, the benefit of smart meters is that it helps to get over one of the headaches of the voids process: lack of power when maintenance and management work is being carried out [how? More detail here]

“The typical thing is that people get to properties and can’t get power on and so can’t turn it around,” says Mr Taylor.

Spark Energy’s Mr Storey says it can also be a hassle when properties on standard prepayment meters.

“If you go into do the cleaning or an inventory and there is no key card, you can’t do hoovering and you have to waste time going to the shop to get a card and top it up. With a smart meter you can do away with all of that.”

The installation of smart meters can also smooth the move in process for the tenant by ensuring that energy to the property is immediately up and running.

“We take the problems that would typically present to the tenant on day one and resolve them on day one of the void. The result avoids delays and improves the tenant’s experience when they move into the property,” says Energy Angels’ Mr Taylor.

So what should the landlord do if the smart meter goes wrong?

“If a meter fails in the analogue world, the tenant will probably phone the landlord but it would be up to the supplier to resolve the issue. Whatever happens in the analogue world will continue in the smart world” he says Mr MacNeil.

“The meter itself is not the landlord’s property. If anything is wrong, it’s down to us to resolve and organise it” says Mr Storey.

The exception will be if the fault develops due to a problem in the property, such as a fuse board being incorrectly wired, which the landlord would be responsible for putting right, he says. As mentioned in the box, however, landlords would also be wise to think about problems that could arise from faulty installation.

Clearly there are also benefits for social landlords who take a direct lead. For starters, in return for securing agreement to install a smart meter, Mr Taylor says they may be able to negotiate spin off benefits, such as a £20 top up and a cut in the standing charge so that the property is not tacking up bills for the landlord while it is empty.

Helping tenants to manage their fuel bills doesn’t just help social landlords to discharge their welfare responsibilities, it makes broader financial sense in terms of sustaining tenancies.

Energy bills are one of the major items of expenditure which hard up tenants have to juggle, alongside their rent payments.

And following the scrapping of direct benefit payments to landlords as part of the universal credit roll out, it will be increasingly tempting for cash-strapped tenants to rack up rent arrears in order to keep the heat and lights on. Providing the tenant with a budgeting tool in the form of a smart meter should help to keep down arrears.

In addition, if they can tap into the data flowing through their residents’ smart meters, social landlords will be able to offer better targeted advice to tenants. An example is Castle Rock, which has an energy advice team that works with tenants.

“A housing association could then take the data and provide very bespoke energy advice to that property if they were perhaps over or underheating,” says Smart Energy GB’s Mr MacNeil.

“If the household is happy for the housing association to see the data they could provide very bespoke energy information and they can make sure the home is heated correctly at the appropriate point.”

And in the longer run, he says that smart meter data could be used by associations to help tackle energy efficiency in their stock. The government suggested in its recently published clean growth strategy that smart meter information could be used for assessing how well buildings are performing in energy terms.

“If they are seeing a batch of housing that is very inefficient from the meter data they can really target their investment to make sure they are getting the investment into the right homes at the right time,” says Mr MacNeil.

The fly in the ointment is data protection legislation which means that the tenant must give their consent in order to access the information contained in the smart meter.

Mr Taylor says: “If the tenant has been using smart meter throughout their tenancy and they move out technically the housing associations won’t have that data unless the tenant want to hand it over.”

While many social landlords may decide to take a back seat, it is clear however there are numerous advantages for those who take a more active approach to the installation of smart meters. From saving tenants money to protecting their lives and their properties it is sensible for asset management teams to take a lead. Gaz and Leckie would surely approve.

Smart meters: A brief history

The drive to make smart meters mandatory dates as far back to when Ed Miliband was secretary of state for energy in the last Labour government.

The devices are intended to replace the analogue meters. However, as these old-fashioned meters have to be physically checked, bills tend to be estimates. With smart meters, it is possible for customer to check their energy consumption in real time using the in-home displays (IHDs), which are an increasingly common feature on kitchen worktops.

However the rollout, which is being funded by energy suppliers themselves indirectly, than envisaged when it began three years ago.

The government has said that every household and business must be offered a smart meter by 2020. So far, approximately 8 million smart meters have been installed by energy suppliers- a fraction of the approximately 30 million devices that will have to be installed in homes and small businesses in order to meet the goal of full coverage.

Despite this problematic roll out, the smart meter evangelists believe that it will reap huge benefits, particularly for the lower income households more likely to be found in social housing.

Smart Energy GB’s Mr MacNeil, says: “We’ve never said this was the silver bullet but one more tool for them (tenants) to manage their energy consumption and get a better understanding of what they are spending. They have never had that acc data-

“It encourages them to change their energy usage behaviours by using energy at different times or understanding which appliance they are using more en than others and then adapt behaviour accordingly so they are using less energy or using it more wisely where possible.” ,

It also gets rid of inconvenience of having to run down to the local shop which may be useful for somebody who may have some form of mobility problem not having to go out at 10pm on a winter night. They would be able to top up the smart meter 24-7 from the comfort of the home.”

Castle Rock Edinvar’s Mr Thomson agrees “Smart meters allows them to visualise what they are spending each day and can budget accordingly.”

This includes a group of tenants who the association discovered were disconnecting themselves from the gas supply because of fears about paying bills. Allowing tenants greater control over their energy consumption could reduce the of spiralling bills, he says.