Not many people know what it takes to retrofit a seventeenth century farmhouse, but with the aid of thermal imagery Ralph Carpenter could give us a flavour.  

“What you’re seeing here,” he explained to the audience at our Suffolk Retrofit Conference, “bearing in mind this is a timber-frame building, is the timber frame showing through at first

 “I’m here at the county hospital site in Colchester, standing backed by the archaeological investigations which are producing innumerable, wonderful finds, including glassware with gladiators carved on it and pottery,” Councillor Lesley Wagland, Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Community, Equality, Partnerships and Performance at Essex County Council told Essex Retrofit Summit attendees, as she highlighted some of the fascinating finds at a site on which Essex Housing would soon build green homes.

“I know what many of you are probably thinking,” Councillor Andy Drummond, Portfolio Holder for Regulatory and Environment for West Suffolk Council, said with a wry smile during his opening remarks at our Retrofit Revisited Suffolk conference - “He’s a politician, and when politicians say they need to do something, they mean ‘you solve this’!” 

“We are the Tenants’ Climate Jury. The time for talk is over, now is the time for action — and action now.”

It was really powerful to hear this testimony from someone on the front line of climate change. This particular person, a tenant in the north of England, had taken part in the Social Housing Tenants’ Climate Jury, which saw 30 tenants from across the north of England come together to deliberate on how best to retrofit their homes.

“To tell you the truth, my heating system is never on!” George rents a multi-storey flat owned and managed by Queens Cross Housing Association in Glasgow. He explained to our Retrofit Revisited conference, which took place in Glasgow in October, how exactly his home stayed warm and comfortable even though he never spent any money on heating.

“In all the flats they changed the windows to triple glazing,” George said. “They put in an extraction system.

“Cleaning up two wood-burning stoves every day, you know, it’s hard on the knees,” one resident from County Durham shared with our North East conference attendees.

• Read more about North East retrofit revisited:

“What is a virtual power plant?” It was an interesting question from Alex Thompson, sales director of AceOn Group and a panellist at our Shropshire Retrofit Revisited conference in September.  

The Shropshire retrofit event - hosted by Shropshire Council - really showed just how ahead of the game Shropshire was when it came to innovation on energy schemes like AceOn’s 

Heating our homes accounts for 14% of the UK’s carbon emissions, requiring a wholesale switch to energy efficient heat pumps. According to the UK Government, 600,000 heat pumps a year need to be installed from 2028 to meet our carbon-reduction targets, aligning with installation levels of other European nations.

Heat pumps create warmer, better homes whilst improving lives and livelihoods.

“We used to love living at our home in the summer,” said Paul, a homeowner from Cumberworth. “Then, in the winter, we used to start to hate it because it was so cold, drafty and miserable.”

It was a powerful message to our Low Carbon Homes Solent conference. The social benefits of retrofit, of lifting people out of fuel poverty, are just as important as the environmental reasons.

“Last August, I found myself on the sharp edge of the economic shutdown” Andrew Glassford, a sound engineer from Manchester, told our Low Carbon Homes Oxfordshire conference in March.

• Read more about Oxfordshire retrofit revisited