Esri UK & OS Social Housing Innovation Challenge

Esri UK and Ordnance Survey (OS) have launched the Social Housing Innovation Challenge, inviting housing associations and local authorities to submit innovative ideas for using geospatial technology to tackle challenges in social housing.

Entry is free with up to three winners receiving free consultancy, geospatial software and data to develop their concept into a working pilot.

With social housing providers under increasing pressure to balance tenant needs, asset performance, compliance and decarbonisation, the challenge is designed to generate ideas that deliver benefits for residents and housing teams and can be shared across the sector.

Esri UK and OS are encouraging providers to imagine new ways of addressing any pressing challenge using location intelligence, from helping vulnerable households prepare for future heatwaves and identifying opportunities for new housing to predicting repairs faster or revealing fresh insights from existing data.

Winning entries will receive free consultancy from Esri UK and OS to build the solution and free Esri ArcGIS software and OS National Geographic Database (NGD) data, the most comprehensive data on Britain’s landscape.

Entrants do not need a fully developed technical solution and only need to complete a short entry form. Ideas are welcome from any department including GIS, IT, Operations, Asset Management, Estates or Sustainability.

Many social housing providers are already using Esri geospatial technology and OS data to better understand operations and make decisions, from identifying homes most suitable for retrofit and decarbonisation programmes to investing in neighbourhoods that need the most support.

The challenge is open until 30 November 2026 and is free to enter with the winner/s announced in early 2027. Housing associations and local authorities can submit ideas by completing a short online form.