Procurement for Housing (PfH) has appointed 27 suppliers to the fifth generation of its social housing emerging disruptors (SHED) framework 鈥� the largest cohort since the framework was established in 2022.
The value of contracts awarded under SHED quadrupled in 2025 compared with 2024. With the framework increasingly used by councils and housing associations to procure emerging technologies from fledgling innovators, the new generation of the framework 鈥� SHED 5 鈥� is worth 拢500m over three years, up from 拢100m for the previous iteration.
PfH has worked again with the Disruptive Innovators Network (DIN), a social housing membership association, to identify early stage tech firms who provide novel services that cannot be sourced easily through traditional public procurement routes.
By their nature, these products are new or highly specialised, and this means social housing procurement teams often lack the technical reference points needed to specify them or compare competing offers, meaning they don鈥檛 fit easily into established procurement routes.
At the same time, small suppliers have difficulty breaking into the social housing market, excluded by complex bid documentation, high financial thresholds and other tender requirements designed for established contractors.
SHED was set up to addresses these issues by offering a simplified, SME-friendly bidding process and a compliant way of social landlords testing and adopting new solutions. Through a quick desk-based selection process, they identify suppliers that best meet their requirements, get pricing information and complete the contracting process.聽
Services offered by this year鈥檚 suppliers include modular housing panels made from recycled glass, a self-testing fire door that monitors its own compliance, a platform predicting home hazards and health risks, a smart heat scheduler allowing residents to better control their heating costs, an anti-mould coating system and a solution to help social landlords communicate with their residents.
PfH operations director Neil Butters said: 鈥淪HED was created to address a practical problem: housing providers needed access to emerging tech solutions, and smaller suppliers needed a route into a highly regulated market. Five generations on, the data shows that this model works. We are seeing more social landlords than ever using SHED to procure innovation, and more SMEs able to scale fresh solutions to persistent challenges such as damp and mould, building safety, digital switchover, decarbonisation, tenant wellbeing, asset management and housing supply.鈥�
Annemarie Roberts, associate director and property lead at the Disruptive Innovators Network, said: 鈥淭he social housing environment is more challenging than ever before, with teams dealing with many here and now issues, as well as trying to be ready for future challenges. Finding innovative, future-focused solutions that can be easily procured is exactly where the SHED framework can help.
鈥淪HED 5 also supports the government鈥檚 reforms that overhaul public purchasing rules to make them simpler, more flexible and transparent and have a focus on opening up contracts to SMEs and more diverse suppliers.鈥�
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