Wrapt Homes: Unlocking investment into whole house retrofit

About the project

Wrapt Homes worked with housing associations and our partners to develop our service that provides the decision-making tools and processes to unlock the retrofit of hard-to-treat homes. We sought to identify and develop solutions and methods to test and evaluate the most appropriate measures for complex homes within housing association’s stock. We identified the relevance of developing the appropriate performance outputs (building, health, energy, social) that can unlock funding and investment into social housing properties. The phase 1 study also identified key barriers to the uptake of retrofit of hard-to-treat homes and sought to identify a process that could overcome these barriers and harness the opportunities presented at the point of void property turnaround within its maintenance lifecycle.

What has been delivered? What has been successful?

• Developed a low-cost, robust methodology for determining and validating building performance pre and post retrofit works
• Established the breadth of barriers and opportunities to deliver whole house retrofit of hard-to-treat homes
• Profiled the funding and financing markets to establish compatibility of different funding opportunities within the retrofit space
• Built a strong team of stakeholders to progress with more detailed testing and demonstration of a holistic service led solution.

What did the project achieve?

Over the three-month period, the team successfully engaged with a range of stakeholders in the social housing and retrofit sectors to build a detailed understanding of the opportunities and barriers to unlocking whole house retrofit of hard-to-treat homes. The social housing sector has been widely focused on ‘easier wins’ and putting off dealing with more complex homes. Wrapt identified the need to develop a holistic customer journey for Housing Associations to assist them in taking on the retrofit of more complex properties in their portfolios.

Key lessons learnt

The key lesson learnt from our feasibility study is that delivering scaled, whole house retrofit of hard-to-treat homes is a complex problem. There are many factors that need to come together to help unlock the decarbonisation of these properties. Taking a holistic approach to retrofit programmes of work can help to overcome this challenge.

The availability of resources (human and financial) is a significant barrier to many Housing Associations taking on their hard to treat homes. Asset management teams within organisations therefore need clear and compelling data sets to build the business case for devising retrofit strategies that complement investments into planned and preventative maintenance programmes. The data sets are not limited to performance, we see an important role in understanding the social value that these projects can bring to residents and communities.

Next steps

Wrapt is looking to work with partners across industry to assist in building a compelling business case to deliver whole house retrofit of hard-to-treat homes. We are looking to engage directly with housing associations to establish the data sets that can facilitate the decision making to deliver the right measures. Sourcing the right datasets can also unlock funding and investment into hard-to-treat homes.