Retrofit Accelerator - Homes

The Mayor of London’s Retrofit Accelerator — Homes helped to transform the way London upgrades its ageing and energy-inefficient housing to create warm, affordable and ultra-low carbon homes.

London’s homes are responsible for around one third of the city’s greenhouse gas emissions and a quarter of them have the worst energy performance rating. The capital also has some of the highest levels of fuel poverty in England. With rising energy costs, this is expected to continue to get worse.

Retrofitting is the refurbishment of existing homes to make them more efficient, sustainable and better for the environment.

With the backing of the European Regional Development Fund, the Retrofit Accelerator — Homes has tackled the climate emergency and reducing energy bills, through insulation and low carbon heat and power solutions. It is a key part of the Mayor’s plans to make London zero carbon by 2030.

The programme provided London boroughs with the technical expertise they need to kick-start ‘whole-house’ retrofit projects across the capital. It also helped to build a network of suppliers and opportunities to accelerate the much-needed retrofitting of private homes. 

The Mayor’s Retrofit Accelerator-Homes Innovation Partnership moved the work of the Retrofit Accelerator - Homes one step further, taking a major stride towards delivering warm, comfortable and affordable net zero housing retrofit at scale, not just in London but across the UK.

Seven London-based social housing providers and four UK building firms, along with a network of suppliers, are working together to stimulate a new market for whole house retrofit and reduce costs.   

The seven social housing providers in the Innovation Partnership are:

• Ealing
• Lambeth
• Sutton
• Haringey
• Barking & Dagenham
• Hammersmith & Fulham
• Enfield

The four building firms are:

• Equans UK
• Bell Group
• Cardo (formerly Osborne Property Services)
• United Living

To bring the costs down for everyone, the Innovation Partnership is available nationally. Outside of London, Nottingham City Homes and Sanctuary Housing are also already investing.

The aim is that after the Innovation Partnership, a national framework for delivering retrofit projects will be launched.

You can find out more about the RA-HIP ‘Retrofit Disruptors’

To further support London’s social housing providers, the Mayor of London provided organisational capability assessments with 12 social housing providers across London and identify future requirements and barriers to retrofit.

These assessments resulted in a bespoke roadmap for each organisation for scaling up retrofit across London and helped to identify common barriers and opportunities to retrofitting homes in London.

Until July 2023, the Retrofit Accelerator — Homes programme was funded equally by the Mayor of London and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). The delivery partners, led by Turner & Townsend, included Energiesprong UK and the Carbon Trust.