Sophie Wates says Octopus Energy Social Housing Tariff cut bills to £0
Sophie Wates moved into a new build one-bedroom house in Essex in autumn 2024 and says the octopus energy social housing tariff has taken her monthly energy bill from around £250 to £0. Inside Housing visited the home to see how Octopus Energy’s Zero Bills scheme is working for social housing residents in practice.
Sophie Wates in Essex
Wates said the change has been immediate in the house she moved into after the move from paying around £250 a month on energy bills to paying nothing. She receives a monthly bill showing how much energy she is using, but the total she has to pay is £0.
Her home is part of a development that has drawn attention from housing associations after Inside Housing revealed earlier this year that nearly 100 social landlords were in talks with Octopus Energy about a zero-bills tariff for affordable housing providers. Wates described the shift simply: before moving in, she had to “choose between gas and electric or food”.
Hill Group and Clarion
The Essex home sits within an 89-home development by Hill Group in partnership with Octopus, with a project value of around £32m. The additional technology costs were shared between Clarion, Octopus and Hill. Out of the 89 homes, 25 are affordable homes bought by Clarion under a Section 106 deal.
Sixteen of those are social rent homes and nine are shared ownership homes. The other 64 homes were sold on the open market for about £480,000 to just under £1m. All the homes are eligible for the Zero Bills tariff, which uses solar panels, a heat pump, a domestic battery and a smart meter.
Zero Bills and Octopus Energy
Octopus says the combination generates enough energy that residents do not need to pay energy bills for at least five years guaranteed. The company says it aims to have 100,000 zero-bills homes by 2030.
Wates said the home has changed daily life as well as monthly spending, describing the garden after the move by saying, “They love the garden. It’s become a dog garden!” She also said, “We should be moving away from oil and gas. It’s not sustainable, whereas this is”.
The scheme also sits alongside government support for home decarbonisation, including the £5bn Warm Homes Fund, while the Future Homes Standard says all new homes will require a heat pump and most must include a form of renewable technology. For residents in homes built for the tariff, the practical test is whether the guaranteed five-year promise holds while they keep the option to switch out at any time.
