The South London Partnership’s InnOvaTe Programme set out to use connected sensors to help five boroughs make better-informed decisions about local services, public spaces and residents’ wellbeing. Its stated aims included supporting recovery from COVID-19, economic growth and healthier lives. The programme was funded with £4 million from the London Councils Business Rates Retention Strategic Investment Pot and ran from October 2019 to March 2023. 15
The partnership covers Croydon, Kingston upon Thames, Merton, Richmond upon Thames and Sutton. Sutton Council led the work on behalf of the other boroughs, with Andrew Parsons serving as programme manager. 5 The programme’s approach was to connect sensors across borough boundaries through a shared IoT platform, gather data from real-world trials and evaluate whether the resulting use cases were effective and viable. 12
Examples ranged from monitoring air quality and road use to testing sensors in vulnerable residents’ homes. In one trial, Sutton and Richmond worked with IoT Solutions Group to install 200 home sensors; changes in activity could trigger alerts to carers or independent-living officers. 4 Hitachi Solutions and Microsoft also worked with the partnership on a platform to make sensor data accessible to the five boroughs. 7
The programme generated 150 IoT ideas and trialled 47 use cases, according to a London-wide project document; it reports that 31 became mainstream services and 21 were shared across more than one borough. 2 The London Office of Technology and Innovation’s use-case library gives a slightly different implementation count—48 use cases—and records examples of practical outcomes, including traffic and air-quality data used to inform planning and policy. 311