www.nesta.org.uk/project-updates/enabling-local-authorities-across-great-britain-to-plan-for-clean-heat-delivery-confidently-and-independently/
Through our work on clean heat neighbourhoods, and with Plymouth City Council, we have seen the valuable role local authorities across Great Britain (GB) have in decarbonising their areas, but we know they struggle with a lack of tools and resources. Therefore, we are partnering with four local authorities - Midlothian, Dudley, Vale of Glamorgan and Glasgow - to test the approach to clean heat planning designed in our previous work with Plymouth City Council. Over a five-month period, we will work together to develop replicable tools and guidance that support local authorities in developing clean heat plans. These plans will help convene local stakeholders and identify the most appropriate low-carbon heating solutions for local areas, supporting the transition to cleaner, more sustainable heat across GB.
Through this project collaborating with local authorities, we've learned and tested how to build confidence and move faster by iterating on digital tools and engaging stakeholders early - such as the supply chain and housing associations - to gather essential local knowledge and context. This work directly informs what will come next as part of our wider area of focus, as shown in the diagram below, including upcoming efforts to enable better collaboration between local authorities and the supply chain when forming local heat plans.
This diagram shows where this project focus on: supporting local authorities through the planning process testing and iterating on existing guidance and tools
Over the past four months, we have worked with Dudley Council, the West Midlands Combined Authority, Glasgow City Council, Midlothian Council and Vale of Glamorgan Council, using a test-and-learn approach. In each place, we mapped the area for technology suitability, engaged local actors for insights, and identified near-term opportunities. To find out what is replicable and what needs adapting to local context, we organised our team around key steps and worked with all partners at the same time, which let us adapt quickly without duplicating work and ensure learnings were transferable.
Here is a chronological breakdown of what we’ve done so far and the learnings and progress we made along the way.
In May 2026, we kicked off the project with our four partners. Early sessions focused on setting up the team and aligning on priorities for the work ahead. We onboarded every partner with the playbook and heat planning tool so they could test, use and critique it at its Alpha stage (an early live version of the product).
We ran a workshop in each place to give partners hands-on time with the tool. These sessions helped us discuss ongoing projects in the area, characteristics of specific housing types, how the tool could be used locally, and what we could improve ( eg, new data, interactions).
Each partner raised something specific to its area: tenement housing in Glasgow, canals and other water bodies for potential heat source infrastructures in Dudley, and ward boundaries for navigating the map in the Vale of Glamorgan. Partners pointed out what the methodology and the map needed to reflect.
Across all places, feedback indicated that forming larger clusters, whether manually or automatically, would create more realistic and manageable opportunity areas.
We uncovered specific gaps, including incorrect technology assignments caused by missing outdoor space data, which allowed us to resolve these issues.
To enable the visualisation of property groupings as actionable “heat projects,” we added functionality to aggregate clusters into broader groups, which also allows for customising clusters by property type. We also integrated ward boundaries to enhance map navigation and match the standards used by local authorities.
The Nesta heat planning tool is built on openly available data, so it can be public and used by the public and private sector across GB. The trade-off is that open data can have gaps. When we reviewed whole areas with our partners, we found missing information that affected which heating technology the tool assigned to each property. Adding new datasets to the Alpha tool takes time, so we built a prototype with Claude AI that lets us manually edit the map and clean up these gaps, enabling us to make progress with less extra resources.
Video showing an interactive prototype to test ways to edit the map and used to manually refine groups of property
A map alone doesn’t tell a local authority where to start, so we also ran sessions in each place to understand what would help them prioritise areas. In Dudley, we held a workshop with council colleagues and the West Midlands Combined Authority (the regional body that coordinates and funds projects across several councils) to explore what makes an opportunity ready for delivery. We tested opportunity pages, a part of the tool that brings the information on a potential project into one place, and discussed who should contribute to them eg, delivery partners and who should see them eg, investors.
We kept making progress without waiting for development, saw which features were worth building, and gave our product team practical insights. Cleaning up the map manually also revealed opportunities. In Dudley, it helped us identify 32 multi-unit blocks of flats as a replicable opportunity for a communal solution (one shared heating system serving many homes). In the rural areas of Vale of Glamorgan and Midlothian, it gave a clearer separation between properties suited to individual solutions and those suited to a network of heat pumps.
Due to missing data, certain properties were identified as viable for either networked or individual heat pumps. To resolve this, we introduced a dedicated map layer marking these dual-suitability zones, streamlining navigation, simplifying next steps, and facilitating manual technology assignments.
Some areas focus on particular technologies, others on council-owned buildings where they have more control. Many also prioritise where success is most likely: well-insulated areas where bill savings will be realised and public buildings with long-term mandates that can anchor shared infrastructure. Councils are also mapping heat network potential to plan future infrastructure and identify initial projects.
Cost estimates, even in wide ranges, would help councils identify funding opportunities early, while knowing where low-carbon heating already exists could help predict local adoption rates.
Over the past months, we have used different ways to gather insights from the supply chain (the companies that design, install and finance heating projects). Our work in Plymouth suggested that local authorities shouldn’t prioritise areas alone. Equallyhe tool’s methodology should be improved with feedback from people who understand policy, technical feasibility and finance, so this has to be a collaborative process. We have asked supply chain members for feedback on our methodology, held 1-1 calls in each place to learn about local context and existing heat projects, and joined events to demo the tool and test how it could help the supply chain and local authorities collaborate on a plan. We are still in this step, so our learnings so far are early.
This is a prototype we are using to test how the supply chain and other stakeholders could interact with the map and provide additional information
Supply chain members were positive about the data the tool already provides and the features to interact with it. We are looking forward to testing how users could contribute their own input, adding context and information to property clusters to inform the plan.
Input from the supply chain reinforced the importance of involving multiple actors such as local contractors, housing associations, and community groups right from the start, and we plan to connect with these groups soon.
Being able to split a wide cluster of properties into smaller ones would help for example anticipate phases for delivery, to treat a set of streets first or a set of similar properties.
The feedback we gather is shaping the tool’s methodology and feeding into the next stage: working with each local authority to form a draft heat plan that brings together local priorities, supply chain insight and the most promising opportunities.
The tool will be launched for all local authorities in Great Britain on 2 November and we will publish a final update from this phase of work with local authorities later this year.
