Judging at Housing Digital Innovation Awards 2022

Ryan Dempsey Joins the Judging Panel

Ryan Dempsey, Chief Executive of TCW, joined the judging panel for the Housing Digital Innovation Awards this year — a seat at the table for the sector's most consequential conversation about where technology is actually taking housing.

Judging an awards programme of this kind means reading past the pitch. Every entry arrives as a claim: a problem identified, a solution applied, an outcome measured. The panel's job is to work out which of those claims hold up, which are genuinely new, and which are simply the same thing done with a smarter interface.

For Ryan, that scrutiny is the familiar part of the job. TCW was built on asking whether a document or a declaration can be relied upon, and a judging panel applies the same question at sector scale — not to one landlord's stock, but to the direction the whole market is moving in.

What the Awards Celebrate

The Housing Digital Innovation Awards celebrate the pioneering housing providers and supply-chain partners who are embracing emerging technologies and digital transformation in order to take UK housing to the next level.

That framing matters. The awards are not restricted to landlords, and they are not restricted to software. Contractors, consultants and partners in the supply chain sit alongside housing providers on the shortlist, because digital transformation in housing is rarely delivered by one organisation on its own — it is delivered by a chain of people, documents and checks that has to hold together end to end.

It is also an awards programme that rewards movement rather than size. A provider with a modest budget and a genuinely better way of evidencing compliance stands alongside a large organisation with a bigger programme, and is judged on the same basis: what changed, for whom, and how it is proved.

The Ceremony at Edgbaston

The awards took place on 10th February at Edgbaston Cricket Ground, Birmingham — a ceremony that brings the shortlisted providers, partners and judges into one room at the start of the housing technology year.

Despite continuing COVID uncertainty, the first ever Housing Digital Innovation Awards saw over 300 people turn out, proving there is a strong appetite to recognise and celebrate the wealth of innovation that has taken place within housing over the past year.

Twenty-one awards were up for grabs at the Edgbaston arena, recognising everything from retrofitting to digital inclusion, and celebrating all areas of the sector, from housing associations to consultancies.

This year's awards were delivered in partnership with Helping Hands of Birmingham, a non-profit organisation that provides relief to homeless people and rough sleepers in Birmingham through the provision of food, drinks, clothing, and toiletries.

We are proud to sponsor this prestigious event, and to have our Chief Executive on the panel that decided the winners. Sponsoring and judging the same programme is a deliberate position: it means backing the standard the sector is being measured against, not just buying a place at the door. You can see the full list of winners on the Housing Digital website.

Most Innovative Housing Provider

TCW sponsored Most Innovative Housing Provider, one of the twenty-one categories decided at the Edgbaston arena. The winner was Johnnie Johnson Housing, a not-for-profit housing association with particular expertise in homes for independent living and for older people.

The category sits at the heart of what the awards were set up to recognise: providers using technology and new ways of working to improve what daily life looks like for residents, rather than adopting technology for its own sake.

Why We Judged

Being on the panel gives an unusually clear view of what the sector is investing in and where it is struggling. Some entries are strong on ambition and thin on evidence. Others are quietly excellent — a routine made shorter, a certificate checked properly for the first time, a reporting cycle that no longer depends on one person's spreadsheet.

Both kinds are instructive to a company building compliance infrastructure, because together they describe the gap TCW exists to close: the distance between a digital initiative that looks transformative and one that holds up when it is tested.

The full judging panel and this year's shortlist are published on the Housing Digital website, so the entries and the people who assessed them are on the record.