Dwelling on the positives: £25,000 Start Up Loan lets HomeHub champion sustainability
A new housing app is helping elderly and vulnerable residents understand the advanced sustainable tech now found in their homes. Support from Business Enterprise Fund North East and the government’s Start Up Loans programme was the foundation for success.
When you’re truly immersed in a sector, you see it all; the good, the bad, and the ugly. But it’s the people on the frontlines getting that warts-and-all perspective who are best placed to create solutions.
Lee Gatley-Hall, founder of HomeHub, is exactly that kind of person.
A former teacher, Lee moved into project management in 2018 and started gaining invaluable experience in the sustainable housing space. This covered local authority housing bodies, private sector delivery partners, and even his own consultancy founded in 2024.
Wherever he went, the pain points were unerringly similar. There was a gulf between tenants and installers. New, sustainable technologies were being put into homes, but their inhabitants were then being left in the lurch.
Limited instruction and support meant residents, particularly elderly or vulnerable ones, often couldn’t operate their fancy new tech. An all-too familiar experience with a neighbour tipped Lee over the edge.
“There was an elderly lady on my street,” he explains. “She’d had a new air source heat pump installed but she didn’t realise how different it was to a boiler. Her energy bills had absolutely skyrocketed.
After speaking to her son and daughter, I got a local company to come and have a look at things for her. I then sat with her and asked her, if she could get this kind of help on her phone, would she have a go? Once I showed her how to use her iPhone to get apps, she seemed keener. She became my first case study.”
Lee built the prototype for what would become HomeHub himself. He attracted testers from contacts at local tenant voice groups, with plenty of free Greggs sausage rolls offered as bribes.
Soon, he had an accessible app that connected residents direct to landlords. They could report problems and access support simply by submitting photos. But this prototype left much to be desired in terms of UX design and functionality.
To implement the lessons he’d learned and develop HomeHub as we know it today, Lee came to BEF North East. A £25,000 Start Up Loan, arranged by Shannon Donaghy, helped fund a new and more powerful iteration of the app.
“This is a case where two organisations’ values aligned perfectly,” Shannon commented. “HomeHub and BEF North East are both committed to helping vulnerable people and marginalised communities achieve better living standards.
We’re proud to be able to get behind HomeHub’s development. Lee is doing amazing work ensuring nobody gets left behind as our economy transitions towards a greater focus on sustainability.”
Reflecting positively on his experience with BEF North East, Lee commented, “The process was a lot easier than I thought it would be. The guidance Shannon sent over lined up perfectly with what we were doing. It was all done within a month, and in the grand scheme of things, it was quite low risk. It made miles more sense than a bank loan.”
HomeHub now has 400+ registered users, thanks in part to the temptation of more free sausage rolls. But the real treat is the functionality users now enjoy; guidebooks, videos, tips for saving energy (and cash), even local supplier recommendations.
As for Lee himself, he faces an important choice. HomeHub is now its own self-sustaining, revenue-earning business. How will he choose to grow that business? Does he seek investment, and give away a percentage of his company? Or, having had a positive experience with business finance, does he opt to take out a bigger loan?
That’s one he has to answer for himself. But HomeHub’s journey so far proves what can happen when great ideas get supported by the right locally knowledgeable funding. Lee’s future is looking safe as houses.
