Technical Briefing 4: Action Planning

The technical briefing summarised the learning from the programme about how local authorities can influence to drive change, and heard from three speakers who gave examples of actions already underway, that have overcome some well-known challenges. They were;

• Charlie Baker (Red Coop, Your Home Better): steps in building an able-to-pay offer
• Katie Matthews (Development Manager, Hampshire Future Hants County Council): building a retrofit training programme
• Rachel Brain (2030 Strategy Manager, Stroud District Council): multiple approaches to building retrofit capacity

Charlie Baker – Red Coop, Your Home Better

This initiative builds on previous research¹ about how to retrofit homes at scale at zero cost to the public purse. The research identified five key aspects of successful retrofit; a trusted offer, building the market, fit for purpose, paying for it and delivery. This breaks down into ten components:

1. Customer journey
2. Assessment and calculation
3. Monitoring and data
4. IT and software
5. Specification and detailing
6. Contracting and guarantees
7. Additional revenues
8. Finance vehicle
9. Scalability
10. Workforce development and skills

The research then looked at what can be done locally and recommended a number of key areas for action; to develop a retrofit hub to coordinate the work, develop a model for solar PV/battery installations to create an income stream from energy sales, develop a finance vehicle, and drive a steady growth in the number of retrofits to enable manageable growth in customer trust, the supply chain and the skilled workforce.  This could then scale up a manageable high quality programme over time to effectively create a flourishing, high quality retrofit industry. This research was exported into Your Home Better – a consortium of ten different bodies (including Parity Projects, B4Box, Lendology CIC, Retrofit Works etc) looking at delivering on all ten of those components. Your Home Better has been procured by the Greater Manchester Combined Authority as a systemic intervention delivering retrofit to ‘able to pay’ homeowners in Greater Manchester.

The programme is addressing a number of the 10 key components in innovative ways. For instance, for 7) Additional Revenues, energy storage is being put forward as the critical piece in the puzzle. For 8) Financial vehicle, Your Home Better is suggesting a suite of bonds, low interest secured and unsecured loans to enable those able to pay to help those less able to pay. This sidesteps having to create the lender, and just focuses on the lending; getting the willing to pay to become the able to pay. For 9) Scalability, the programme is benefitting from having been procured by the Combined Authority; doors are now opening that were not before. For 10), Workforce Development, B4Box are carrying out their contracting and training college model and currently have 72 members of staff delivering retrofit.

Your Home Better is currently underway offering advice and an assessment services and green bonds. They are currently experiencing challenges getting workers on site due to supply chain constraints and foresee more intervention to address this particular challenge.

Katie Matthews – Hampshire Futures Hants County Council

Hampshire County Council (HCC) provide an excellent example of a council working across its internal departments to make use of partnerships and expertise that already exist to drive the retrofit agenda. HCC’s Climate Change team sought to address the lack of retrofit skills needed to address the able-to-pay market and began by running some stakeholder mapping events, which brought them together with the skills and participation service that sits within children’s services. This team exists to ensure all children make a successful transition into adult life. Through a number of previous projects this team had worked with borough and district councils, with businesses and with FE colleges to understand the broad skills needs in Hampshire and the Isle of Wight and had recently focused on the construction sector. It therefore made sense for the work to develop retrofit skills and training offers to come out of the Climate Change team, to sit with the Skills and Participation Service who had good links with colleges and employers.

Working with the Climate Change team, HCC began working with The Retrofit Academy (TRA) on a collaborative approach to the delivery of TRA’s own retrofit qualifications (see the blog for Technical Briefing 1 for more on this) by local colleges and training providers in a coordinated way. This is formalised through the purchase of two Licences: an Infrastructure Partnership Licence and a Training Licence. The Infrastructure Partnership Licence is a partnership agreement which provides support to establish a group to drive forward retrofit skills in the region. TRA carry out research to determine the retrofit skills gap locally, they help to identify and set up local training providers to deliver TRA retrofit qualifications and they help to access retrofit funding. The Training Licence is an agreement to deliver TRA retrofit qualifications exclusively in a geographical area. This is available to all FE colleges, universities and private training providers. The TRA provides all learning materials and ‘train the trainer’ courses, while the colleges undertake the marketing, student recruitment and induction and teaching.

This programme was launched in November at an online webinar attended by over 100 attendees from local authorities, housing associations, employers, FE colleges, training providers and other stakeholders. Work is currently underway to establish a Retrofit Training Consortium and due diligence of applicants will be completed by January 2023, for teaching to begin by April. A Steering Group is currently being established to improve collaboration and connect existing programmes. TRA is also helping to access skills funding and has submitted a bid to the Homes Decarbonisation Skills Fund for £1 million to include Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

Rachel Brain – Stroud District Council

Stroud is a smaller rural council in a two tier local authority area, with wider public sector collaboration on climate change. As a smaller council, it is particularly beholden to the carbon challenge of the built environment, so much of which is outside public sector control. There are a number of challenges; the upfront cost of retrofit, the fragmented approach to retrofit (public sector, affordable warmth and private housing work going on in silos), the skills and supply chain challenges that have been well covered in these blogs and unfamiliarity with new quality standards. Additionally, local authorities are poorly equipped to act as community leaders in retrofit as they have no statutory duty to reduce carbon emissions or improve housing quality and statutory conflicts exist (such as planning). Finally, there is the challenge of the energy grid, with its infrastructure that is not fit for the future and facing many challenges to decarbonise.

This can all be simplified into four strategic dependencies: 1) Planning – regulation and energy supply, 2) the Retrofit Economy – growth and demand, 3) Skills – both for now and the future and 4) Behaviour change – including social norms and trends. These are dependencies because success in retrofit depends on them all being actively progressed. If you drive demand without attending to the need for growth in the supply chain, for example, then demand will outstrip supply. In Gloucestershire, they are addressing all four dependencies in three key areas of work; the affordable warmth segment of the market, public estates work and private homes and businesses, working to break the silo approach.

Gloucestershire is about to face unprecedented rapid growth in the affordable warmth market as rising energy prices push more people into fuel poverty. Yet work in this market has never yet led to the normalisation of economic growth in the energy retrofit sector. It is worth asking why this is, as retrofit is founded on the construction sector which usually spearheads economic growth. Why can the retrofit sector not grow unaided to meet demand? Basic economics tells us that a sector can grow through market penetration (growth in market share of existing products), market development (current products break into new markets), product development (new products break into existing markets) or diversification (new products, new markets). The retrofit sector has a variety of products and innovations, and is similar to many sectors in its skill, supply chain and financing mechanisms and yet is not scaling up. This is because the market was not born in the usual way through commercial competitiveness and marketing but through affordable warmth work. ‘Early adopters’ are unusual and reliant on incentives. Different funds will lead to a peak in demand but there is no long-term stability to this, so businesses do not see an incentive to grow.

A new approach is therefore being adopted across Gloucestershire, focusing on the high-end aspirational market. Work is being done currently to understand this new market and action research will begin in the new year with members of this market. They are also working to build strategic partnerships with training and skills providers, Lendology and building societies offering green mortgages and community energy groups. A local approach is needed for peer-to-peer support, but national support is needed too.

John Dooner – Important Themes from LRAP

There are a number of key issues for retrofit that were identified through the Technical Briefings and the Coaching Sessions, across the three themes of training and skills, supply chain, and communities. Some of these issues lie within the control of local authorities, such as procurement processes, planning guidance, resident engagement, housing stock data. However,  for those issues outside of local authority control, well developed partnerships are needed. Soft issues in both areas need to be made explicit so work can be done to build trust and understanding; for example, working with residents to build a willing-to-pay market. Hard issues need innovative solutions; for example procurement processes which reward tenders based on social value rather than price.

Three powerful themes emerged from the programme as a whole: Trust, Clarity and Decision-making. We need to be clear about those decisions we want to make and trust the people we are making them with. Throughout this programme it was clear that connection is so important, particularly as people navigate post-covid lockdown uncertainty and realignment. That connection allows the discovery of other perspectives. It allows enquiry to happen to help us understand what we can and cannot do. Connection also allows people to see first-hand the enormous commitment there is to deliver the right work for the right reasons. Finally, it also allows people to share the challenge of complexity and make sense of it. Through working together, the councils have tried to strip away some of these complexities to work out their next steps. We are reminded of those important Four Questions to frame productive conversations to enable those next steps:

• What will happen if we do this?
• What will happen if we don’t do this?
• What won’t happen if we do this?
• What won’t happen if we don’t do this?