Social housing

Our technology team supported one social housing organisation with their cyber security testing by performing an ethical hacking exercise (red team). The exercise sought to replicate the actions of a real-life attacker that may seek to cause malicious harm to systems and data, leveraging leading-edge cyber-attack capabilities utilised by our in-house ethical attackers. The exercise involved several simulations to both test the perimeter and internal network, including ‘phishing’, deployment of malware and leveraging harvested credentials. The exercise identified several opportunities to enhance both protective and detective controls that could potentially prevent a cyber-attack and/or enable a more effective response.

We partnered with one of Wales’s largest social housing providers to conduct an extensive carbon footprint analysis for their 2021-22 and 2022-23 emissions. We worked with the client to analyse their carbon emissions using our in-house carbon footprinting tool, with the project focussing on calculating emissions across all three scopes to offer a holistic view of their environmental impact. This included:

• Assessing emissions sources which were relevant for emissions reporting, aligning with the Greenhouse Gas Protocol.
• Incorporating tenant energy consumption into the emission calculations.
• Providing assurance on the accuracy and quality of the client’s carbon data.
• Identifying and sharing improvements to enhance data granularity for future reporting years with the client.

The project identified opportunities for resource efficiency, stakeholder engagement, innovation and continuous improvement.

A social housing provider wanted to implement a Pension Salary Sacrifice scheme for approximately 300 employees. The primary challenge was to design and implement a scheme that complied with legal obligations around National Minimum Wage, protected employee entitlements to certain state benefits and aligned with the client's organisational culture.

We undertook an eligibility analysis for the Employer to enable a salary ‘threshold’ to apply to employees entering the scheme and organised a ‘key decisions’ meeting with key stakeholders from HR, Payroll, Finance and Legal to ensure the scheme was designed to fit within the culture and their requirements.

We prepared all the employee communication documents provided to employees to ensure the scheme was compliant from a HMRC perspective and delivered presentations to all employees to introduce the scheme and encourage uptake amongst the eligible employee population.

The successful implementation of the Pension Salary Sacrifice Scheme resulted in significant financial savings over a 12 month period of approximately:

• £40,000 for the employees
• £68,000 for the Social Housing provider