Standardisation only way to persuade households to pay for retrofit works, chief says

Standardising retrofit works in privately owned properties is the only way to persuade homeowners to pay for the work, the chair of the National Retrofit Hub has said.

Lynn Sullivan (pictured) said categorising building types to bring down costs would be the only way to get economies of scale.

Speaking at today’s Building the Future Commission conference in London, Sullivan said: “We believe that if we can look at the stock in terms of the characterisation and open up new opportunities for economic propositions for privately owned stock, then that’s the only we can do it to get some level of standardisation and packaging to get economies of scale.”

She added: “We’ve got to try and understand where the linkage is in order to make more of the standardisation to retrofit, because that’s the only way we’re going to bring costs down, because i don’t think any of us thinks that any government will pay for all privately owned stock to come up to net zero.”

It comes two weeks after Rishi Sunak downgraded the government’s net zero goals to make around five million homes which would struggle to pay for energy efficiency retrofits exempt from a ban on gas boilers after 2035.

Sullivan also said there had been an “evolution of our definition of beauty” in buildings due to an increased focus on energy efficiency.

She suggested that design aesthetics had gone on a “massive red herring” in the 20th century following the invention of air conditioning, and that it had “completely skewed our aesthetic judgement”.

She said: “Buildings are much more subtly done now, with nicely integrated shading because that’s absolutely key to dealing with a warming climate and the health and wellbeing of occupants. So i do see that aesthetic judgement changing and that to me is very exciting.”