Why Retrofitting Keeps Going Wrong, and What to do About it 

A government audit has found that over 30,000 homes have had sub-standard insulation installed under two recent publicly-funded retrofit schemes. The schemes, Energy Company Obligation (ECO4) and the Great British Insulation Scheme (GBIS), aim to reduce fuel poverty and carbon emissions, by funding energy-efficiency improvements. However, the audit found that the majority of 60,000 homes that received solid wall insulation under these schemes could be at risk of damp and mould due to poor quality work, such as inadequate ventilation and roofline extensions. Sadly, some very serious cases have already arisen. Where damp and mould are present, respiratory illnesses, stress and other problems follow. 

This comes on the back of failings under previous schemes like the Green Homes Grant, including issues arising from poorly installed spray foam roof insulation. Flammable cladding is still in the process of being removed from 9,000–12,000 buildings, after the Grenfell tragedy.  

Why retrofit skills matter

All these failings are an indictment of the country’s approach to retrofitting to date, and with that, its approach to retrofit skills. Unless we do something differently, we risk undermining public trust in retrofitting completely. 

I’ve spent the last three years researching how to develop the nation’s retrofit skills. I started looking at this topic because the Climate Change Committee has said plainly: there’s no route to net zero if we don’t decarbonise virtually all homes in the UK.  

So, a lot of retrofitting needs to happen, more than 20 million homes, and we will need a skilled workforce to do that, 250,000-500,000 new roles are estimated. There are a huge range of roles and skills involved.  

A fragmented system

What I’ve found is that, just like when you retrofit a house and need to think about how these different roles work together, we need policymakers to think much more carefully about how they work together to develop the retrofit programmes and skills we need. 

At the moment, we have had a badly fragmented approach. 

DfE funds FE colleges, which follow steers from local employers set out in Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) about what courses to offer. In the case of retrofitting, the LSIPs showed that most construction firms were not aware of the skills that would be needed and were not planning to access training. After all, several noted, it is not compulsory. Unsurprisingly, colleges have thus reported low take-up of these types of courses to date. 

That’s because elsewhere in Whitehall, multi-billion-pound retrofitting schemes have been designed and rolled out by DESNZ without due regard for skills. Only so-called ‘tier 1’ construction firms, that act as umbrella bodies in bidding for multi-million-pound government contracts, need to employ a handful of specific roles under PAS 2035, the retrofit building standard. There has been no requirement for their sub-contractors, who mainly deliver the work, to have specific training or qualifications.  

Theoretically, it should be in the tier 1 contractor’s interests to ensure their workforce is well trained and delivering to a high standard. But instead, there has been every incentive, competitive procurement, tight deadlines, limited quality checks, to hit the ground running, deliver cheaply and quickly, get paid and get out. I’ve also found cases where firms have gone out of business, leaving the public sector to pick up the pieces. 

Meanwhile, most newbuild housing has not been built to high enough energy-efficiency standards, so the number of homes that will need retrofitting grows each year.  

Towards a long-term approach

It all points to the need for a more joined-up, long-term policy approach.  

The ESNZ Select Committee looked into a suite of retrofitting problems earlier in the year and recommended a new national licensing scheme for retrofit operatives. This aligns with my own earlier recommendations, informed by interviews with experts, that relevant training should become mandatory. No one wants to put off good tradespeople getting involved in retrofitting, but that risk could be mitigated if it is funded properly and brought in carefully.  

A national licensing scheme would level the playing field between the tier 1 contractors, so they would no longer be at a competitive disadvantage for spending more time or money training their workforce.  

Direct labour organisations, where social housing providers employ their own workforce, and community retrofit organisations could also offer alternative models for delivery. 

Consistent, non-competitive funding should also be offered for micro-sized firms and individuals to skill themselves up, and for colleges to host relevant courses.  

At the moment, short-term competitive DESNZ funding for courses doesn’t meet their full costs, let alone the opportunity costs for tradespeople spending time off-site. FE colleges I’ve spoken with say they won’t even bid for these fast-turnaround funding pots, because they can only recruit tutors and learners once their income is confirmed, and DESNZ requires course delivery to be completed within a few months. 

Training the future workforce

Of course, it’s not just the existing workforce, but the future workforce that need training. This means creating opportunities for young people to pursue ‘green’ careers in retrofitting. An obvious way to do that would be to specify that firms winning public contracts must offer apprenticeships.  

Yet councils I’ve spoken with say it has been nigh-on impossible to deliver this, given that previous government retrofit schemes have only provided 1 or 2 years’ funding at a time, whereas apprenticeships typically take three years. Moreover, if individual councils push for higher skills requirements or more apprenticeships, the tier 1 firms simply focus on winning business in other areas.  

Another change that’s needed is for all the main qualifications for young people joining the construction workforce to be updated to include basic building physics and retrofitting awareness. This should, over time, mean we build to higher standards in the first place, and that different trades who come into homes at different times will have the awareness to ensure their work doesn’t compromise the performance of other elements, such as leaving holes in insulation. 

Signs of progress

Next month, the government promises a new Warm Homes Plan and a Clean Energy Workforce Strategy. I have my fingers crossed that this is going to be a watershed moment for retrofitting and retrofit skills. 

The government has promised these plans will respond to the recommendations of the ESNZ Committee and have set up a Retrofit System Reform Advisory Panel of experts to advise ministers.  

There are other signs of progress. Labour’s most recent round of Warm Homes funding covers three years. The Devolution Bill intends to devolve funding for retrofit to (some) strategic authorities and to give them joint responsibility for LSIPs. This would see more scope for locally coherent retrofit programmes and skills plans to be developed. In my forthcoming research for the Gatsby Foundation, I hope to provide some advice for councils on what they can do next.  

Skills England has not yet got seriously stuck into retrofitting. But with £13bn of Warm Homes retrofitting due to be delivered, they will need to ensure training capacity is there to meet this policy-stimulated demand. Many FE colleges have used previous capital grants to develop retrofit training facilities already, but need appropriate funding and awarding bodies to move faster in approving new courses. 

The moment of opportunity

There are no quick wins to be had in closing the retrofit skills gap, but there are big wins if we get it right: improved homes and resident health, decarbonisation, boosting green jobs and skills. This is an important, perhaps even the last, moment when there is enough time to roll out a new approach in time for it to bear results before the next election. 

By Charlotte Ravenscroft the author of ‘Closing the Retrofit Skills Gap’ (2025)