Tony Beer, Managing Director at RetrofitWorks, discusses the Cheaper Bills, Warmer Homes Strategy and the urgent need for action to upgrade the nation’s existing homes. Tony encourages UK decision-makers to read, share and engage with the plan’s proposals.
RetrofitWorks is proud to have been contributors to the insightful Cheaper Bills, Warmer Homes Strategy, which was launched last month at Portcullis House. It’s an independent plan from a cross-sector group of UK industry experts including professionals, thought leaders, charities, private sector institutions, local authorities, analysts, academics and policy makers. Business Development Manager Soren Nollegard and I participated alongside RetrofitWorks Founder and MD of Parity Projects, Russell Smith.
The plan offers a bold and transformative 10-year programme to retrofit the UK’s homes to:
- Tackle the long-term causes of the cost-of-living crisis
- Bring economic prosperity
- Improve quality of life
- Address climate change
Above all, it is an important contribution to mapping out a workable strategy to retrofit and thus upgrade the nation’s homes, by really getting to grips with the scale of the problem and offering practicable details of the solutions via a Six Point Plan.
What the plan means for most households
Call it future-fit, upgrading, improving, refurbishing, all of these terms are about retrofitting to improve a home’s energy efficiency performance, which when carried out in the steps recommended by the Cheaper Bills, Warmer Homes Plan, will result in:
- Money in a household’s pocket offering a saving for the average household of at least £779 per year every year for decades to come. Significantly, the most at-risk households will benefit from the biggest savings of up to £4,464 per year
- No household will have to pay from their own pocket. Instead, measures are funded through a mix of repayments from energy savings and grants for lower income households
- Every home will be fit for the future: efficient, comfortable, healthy, safe, convenient and eco-friendly, achieved through a whole house upgrade consisting better heating systems, solar panels, and smart technologies with minimal disruption.
- Local delivery for local benefit: the plan is made easy and accessible to all through future-fit one-stop-shops nationwide
- Revitalise local economies and communities driving an average of £671m investment into each local authority area, managed and delivered by local people, creating 500,000 high quality local jobs.
The six-point plan then goes into detail about how all the above can be achieved, from a national plan with local delivery, tackling fuel poverty, financed renovation for all, fixing housing standards, green jobs and skills, and building the market for low carbon heat.
Our tried and tested template
Here at RetrofitWorks, we believe that everything proposed in the Cheaper Bills, Warmer Homes plan is realistic. In fact, we know it is achievable because we have been doing it and are delighted to have one of our community-led One-Stop-Shop retrofit schemes with Cosy Homes Oxfordshire included in the report, as a ‘tried and tested’ case study.
We join with the other thought-leaders who have worked so hard to produce this plan to encourage as many people as possible to read, share and engage with the proposals. But above all, we strongly advise that UK decision makers take this to heart and implement the recommendations as soon as possible. The cost of inaction, and the gains that can be won by being bold, makes this plan unavoidable. We must act now as delaying will only make meeting the challenge even harder.
In the words of the UN Climate Change cop27, the planet is ‘sending us a distress signal’. We can no longer afford for this distress signal to fall on deaf ears.
A copy of the Cheaper Bills, Warmer Homes report is available here.
