How Technology Can Transform Social Housing: An Interview with Vericon Systems

Housing Industry Leaders sat down with Andy Greenhorn, National Sales Director at Vericon, to discuss how technological innovation is transforming social housing. In this interview, Andy discusses the current social housing challenges, and how Vericon are creating future-proof products to benefit the sector and residents alike.  

About Vericon 

Vericon is a manufacturer of IoT devices. Their range of solutions span across various applications, including boiler management and emergency light testing, as well as temperature & humidity monitoring and power consumption solutions. At the core of Vericon’s mission lies a deep commitment to helping housing providers cut costs while simultaneously enhancing efficiency, maintaining regulatory compliance, and delivering an improved overall service to tenants.

Q: Tell me about the current key issues within social housing 

One of the big concerns is the current damp and mould problem, and with Awaab’s Law coming into play later this year – it means that housing providers have got to react more efficiently. They will need to be more proactive in finding the root cause of damp & mould as well as far better record keeping for investigations and remedial actions. 

There’s a lot of things going on within a property and without collecting all the data, we don’t actually know what’s going on. And this is where the industry is changing – because everybody wants data, but it’s how you handle the data and how you interpret that data to the tenant and to the Housing Association. This is where our strengths lie as a business – we know how to handle the data and we know how to actually produce the reports that are needed for housing associations to stay compliant.

Q: How is Vericon supporting Awaab’s Law? 

Vericon supports Awaab’s Law implementation through specialised compliance management. We help social housing providers monitor and address damp and mould issues effectively across their entire property portfolio.

Our Auditable Process directly aligns with the new regulations, delivering immediate data insights and automated reporting capabilities. Every damp and mould investigation, along with subsequent remedial actions, is automatically documented in our system, creating a comprehensive audit trail that meets regulatory requirements.

The platform’s strength lies in its data-driven approach, providing social housing landlords with essential tools for proactive management. By capturing and analysing property data, our system enables early detection of potential issues, allowing landlords to implement preventative measures before problems develop into more serious concerns.

Awaabs Law Process

Q: Can you tell me about your latest innovation in property management technology? 

We are really proud to introduce HomeHub, our most advanced property monitoring solution to date. We have specifically developed this sophisticated system to transform how housing associations and property managers oversee their residential properties, offering unprecedented insight into residents’ living environments. HomeHub provides comprehensive environmental monitoring, assessing conditions within each property every five minutes. We recognise that daily monitoring isn’t sufficient for modern property management, which is why we’ve engineered this solution to deliver more frequent and accurate assessments, enabling early detection of issues such as damp and mould.

HomeHub

Q: What role do you see IoT technology playing in the development of social housing in 2025?

It’s fundamental. There’s no way you can make smart choices within properties without collecting data, doing the analytics, and having thorough risk reports. You can’t make an informed choice to go out to a property, just to go back and see it two weeks later, or maybe a month later, and so on.

Q: How do your systems positively influence resident’s quality of life? 

Resident engagement is a strong one. The recent release of our HomeHub, which is a seven inch touchscreen digital bilingual thermostat with built in  temperature and humidity monitoring. It is a way of communicating between the residents and the landlord – It means that the residents are getting the right information about what’s happening within the properties. Actually, the product itself will even tell you that you need to start opening windows etc.

Q: Are there any other transformative products you’d like to discuss? 

We have a product called EmeRed, which is a compliance product. EmeRed is a small, intelligent device that is programmed to automatically carry out relevant checks to ensure that emergency lights are working when they are needed, compliant with relevant BSI standards and industry legislation.

The product fits into the lights, and we can actually do all the checks remotely. That’s quite unique for us, and that’s just one side of the business.

Then, one of the biggest problems faced by the sector is under-pressure boiler callouts and the costs related to them.. We’ve got a product called AutoFill that reduces pressure-related issues in your central heating system by automatically repressurising the system ensuring the system remains in optimal condition. That one product that would probably save, on average, about 60% of call outs.

EmeRed in fitting

To find out more about Vericon click here.