Home Energy Advice Tool
Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero's Home Energy Advice Tool alpha assessment report
Home Energy Advice Tool
| Assessment date: | 14/05/2025 and 20/10/25 |
| Stage: | Alpha |
| Type: | Assessment |
| Result: | Uprated to Green on receipt of amber evidence |
| Service provider: | Department for Energy, Security and Net Zero |
Previous assessment reports
- Alpha report (with amber outcome): /service-standard-reports/home-energy-advice-tool-heat
Service description
This service aims to solve the problem of:
- Information on home energy improvement measures and finance is often fragmented and not well signposted resulting in user confusion, making it challenging for consumers to find the information they need. The new Home Energy Advice Tool (HEAT) will provide a gov.uk service, centred around tailored advice and delivering information to consumers in one place. This will allow an effective digital consumer journey, where consumers can identify and choose which home retrofit improvements they make, find a trusted installer, apply for existing public funding and learn more about sources of green finance, including those who do not qualify for public grants.
Service users
This service is for:
General End-User Group:
- Lower Income Owner Occupier – Those who do not have the money to consider all the options but want to improve home heating. They may be unsure how and who to trust for advice/information.
- Able to Pay Owner Occupier – Those who don’t know the right solution for the house type and are not sure who to trust for advice/information.
- Private Tenant – Those not in control of the situation and are easily put off by information overload.
- Social Renter – Those who don’t know where to start in terms of options and do not know what they are eligible for as a social tenant.
- Professional Landlord – Those who understand grant entitlement per house/stock but find it challenging to confirm reliable, full proof options and are sceptical of return on investment of low carbon home improvements. They do understand the impact on home resale value.
| Things the service team has done well: |
- The team have a clear Vision for the service and have collaborated with other teams in the eco system to learning lessons.
- Good evidence demonstrated of utilising existing data from the current clunky service to show insights, informing the design of the new digital service.
- Demonstrated strong relationship with policy and delivery teams across organisation to understand interdependencies and sharing of knowledge.
- Navigating through legacy implementation and fast paced change of policy.
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When providing amber evidence, the team presented information that showed a mature understanding of the needs of service users. They have highlighted the work they have done and enabled this to be shared with stakeholders and colleagues and for the report to turn green achieving all standards at alpha.
1. Understand users and their needs
Decision
The service was rated green for point 1 of the Standard.
2. Solve a whole problem for users
Decision
The service was rated green for point 2 of the Standard.
3. Provide a joined-up experience across all channels
Decision
The service was rated green for point 3 of the Standard.
4. Make the service simple to use
Decision
The service was rated green for point 4 of the Standard.
5. Make sure everyone can use the service
Decision
The service was rated green for point 5 of the Standard.
6. Have a multidisciplinary team
Decision
The service was rated green for point 6 of the Standard.
The team now have a dedicated performance analyst and a permanent resource is planned for Beta. The team also have a test engineer scheduled to arrive on the team for Beta.
7. Use agile ways of working
Decision
The service was rated green for point 7 of the Standard.
Optional advice to help the service team continually improve the service
- It was clear in the assessment that DESNZ utilise contractors on their development team and have a pool of UCD. However, this approach does not stop the excellent collaboration that happens on this product, and it is important that during Beta these collaborative calls continue across the team to ensure shared knowledge.
8. Iterate and improve frequently
Decision
The service was rated green for point 8 of the Standard.
9. Create a secure service which protects users’ privacy
Decision
The service was rated green for point 9 of the Standard.
10. Define what success looks like and publish performance data
Decision
The service was rated green for point 10 of the Standard.
The team now have a dedicated performance analyst and a permanent resource is planned for Beta.
11. Choose the right tools and technology
Decision
The service was rated green for point 11 of the Standard.
12. Make new source code open
Decision
The service was rated green for point 12 of the Standard.
The team has not developed any new components for this phase. They have confirmed they will publish all new code in a GitHub repository in the next development phases
13. Use and contribute to open standards, common components and patterns
Decision
The service was rated green for point 13 of the Standard.
14. Operate a reliable service
Decision
The service was rated green for point 14 of the Standard.
Next Steps
All items have been addressed by the team within the three-month period set and the ambers have now achieved a green status.
The service can continue in private beta, subject to getting approval from the GDS spend control team. The service must meet the standard at beta assessment before launching public beta.