Home Improvement Agencies (HIAs) operate across most of England. Their role is to work with people to help them to make adaptations or repairs to their homes so they can continue to live there in safety, warmth and comfort. This can be anything from fitting a grabrail, to replacing a broken boiler or even project managing a fully wheelchair accessible home extension. Whatever the solution, the idea is to work with the customer to deliver the best outcomes for them.

HIA are generally commissioned and funded by different parts of the health and social care system. As the Government appointed national body for HIAs, my organisation Foundations was keen to compare and contrast these different types of commissioner at our recent national conference in Manchester. So we invited a director of public health, and commissioners from a county council and a clinical commissioning group (CCG) to form our own Dragons’ Den. Each were given a notional £250,000 to invest in service ideas pitched by delegates.