Evidence is only useful if the organisation producing it has no stake in the outcome. Tricity Labs has no retrofit delivery arm, no supply relationship, and no financial interest in what the evidence recommends.
An evidence report from a company with a financial interest in the retrofit work that follows is not a neutral assessment. It is a proposal dressed as a report. It cannot be independently defended, and funders, boards, and regulators are increasingly aware of that distinction.
Warm Homes SHF and ECO4 both require evidence that measures were installed and performing. Evidence from the installer who carried out the work is not independent — and carries less weight than evidence from a party with no stake in the outcome.
A board paper that cites evidence from a supplier with a delivery contract is a report that cannot be independently verified. That exposes the association to challenge. Evidence from an independent party does not.
RSH consumer standards inspections are increasingly focused on the quality of evidence, not just its presence. Evidence that can be shown to be structurally independent carries weight that evidence from a conflicted party cannot.
A contractor who installs heat pumps has a financial interest in demonstrating that heat pumps perform well. Their post-installation monitoring cannot be structurally independent — regardless of how it is presented. Their evidence is a consequence of their commercial model.
A platform whose commercial model depends on demonstrating value from its own hardware is not producing independent evidence of performance. It is producing marketing material with a data layer. The findings will reflect what the system is designed to find.
Any organisation that both assesses performance and delivers the programme being assessed has an inherent conflict between what the evidence shows and what follows from it. The conflict does not need to be deliberate to be real.
We are paid to measure. We are not paid for what the measurement recommends. That is the only arrangement that produces evidence worth relying on.
Building Performance Evaluation (BS 40101) — measured, not modelled.Building Performance Evaluation (BS 40101) is the British Standard for measuring how buildings actually perform in use — not how they were designed to perform. The two things are often very different.
The standard requires that the evaluation is conducted by a party independent from the retrofit delivery chain. That independence requirement is not a formality — it is the reason the evidence is defensible. A performance report from the company that carried out the retrofit cannot satisfy that requirement, regardless of how it is worded.
Verity is designed to operate as an independent BPE Technical Partner under BS 40101. Its evidence is structurally independent because Tricity Labs has no delivery interest to protect.
Most platforms in this space cannot say the same. Independence is a design decision, not a compliance checkbox.
Independent production. Timestamped measurement. Continuous record. No financial interest in the findings. All four are required. Verity provides all four.
Verity surfaces what was measured: temperature, humidity, occupancy, dates, duration. It does not conclude why a home is cold or who is responsible. That distinction matters legally, and it is maintained by design throughout the platform.
This property measured below 18°C with occupancy confirmed across 14 consecutive days. Relative humidity averaged 74%.
This property is cold because of a defective boiler, a landlord obligation breach, or a particular intervention failure.
The evidence supports a decision. The decision belongs to your team, your legal advisers, and your regulators. Verity provides the foundation. You draw the inference.
Talk to us about what independent evidence would mean for your next funder submission, board paper, or RSH inspection.
