Reliable Technology Resilience for the Housing Sector

Thirteen Housing is a large social housing provider supporting more than 34,000 homes across the North East and Yorkshire. With over 1,600 employees delivering frontline housing, repairs and tenant services, dependable technology is essential to keeping communities connected.

For housing providers, technology disruption doesn’t just affect systems. It impacts tenants, operational delivery, and regulatory confidence. Thirteen needed an infrastructure foundation that could support essential services without interruption.

The Challenge: Business Continuity in the Housing Sector

Like many organisations across the housing sector, the organisation was operating with an ageing and fragmented technology environment. Multiple platforms and suppliers had created unnecessary complexity, increasing both operational risk and cost.

This led to several critical challenges:

• Limited confidence in business continuity arrangements
• Slow and unpredictable disaster recovery
• Data protection spread across multiple vendors
• Rising storage and infrastructure costs
• Increased pressure on internal technology teams

For a housing provider delivering critical public services, downtime was not an option.

The Solution: Simplified Technology Resilience and Recovery

Synapse worked closely with the organisation to design a consolidated resilience and disaster recovery service aligned to the realities of the housing sector.

The solution delivered:

• A single managed service for backup and disaster recovery
• Near real-time recovery for critical housing systems
• Clearly defined recovery objectives aligned to service priorities
• Reduced complexity and ongoing management effort
• Regular testing to maintain compliance and assurance

By simplifying the underlying technology and delivering it as a managed service, the organisation gained predictable performance without the burden of managing it in-house.

The Outcome: Faster Recovery, Lower Cost, Greater Confidence

By restoring control at the foundation, the organisation achieved measurable improvements across resilience, cost control, and operational confidence.

• 160x improvement in disaster recovery performance
• Recovery points reduced to approximately 45 seconds
• 100% SLA achievement across the service
• 70% reduction in data storage costs
• Multiple legacy suppliers replaced with one integrated service

This shift allows teams to focus on tenant services, community outcomes and long-term housing delivery, rather than reacting to technology incidents.

Customer Perspective

“Synapse was very responsive from the beginning. They proved the integration and recoverability in the POC. Everything was ‘no problem’, even when questions were outside the scope of the project. Very professional, with no additional invoices.”

Hassan Bahrani
Senior Network & Infrastructure Manager, Thirteen Housing

Building Resilience Across the Housing Sector

Housing providers are under increasing pressure to deliver always-on services while managing cost, compliance and risk. A resilient technology foundation is critical to:

• Protecting tenant and housing data
• Maintaining service continuity during incidents
• Supporting digital transformation initiatives
• Reducing operational complexity and cost
• Meeting regulatory and audit expectations

Synapse works with housing associations and social landlords across the UK to build resilient, secure and cost-effective technology environments.

Start Where Recovery Confidence Matters Most

If your organisation needs stronger disaster recovery, clearer recovery assurance, or greater confidence in your technology resilience, the first step is understanding where risk is highest.

Speak to Synapse to assess your recovery readiness, reduce operational risk, and build a more resilient foundation for housing services.

‍