59. Retrofit Accelerator for Homes Case Study

The Mayor of London’s Retrofit Accelerator for Homes (RA-H) is an ambitious and innovative programme, jointly funded by the Mayor and the ERDF, to provide deep retrofit to social housing in London.

The programme provides technical advice and support to social housing landlords to deliver deep retrofit. RA-H also includes the Innovation Partnership (RA-HIP), an innovative procurement mechanism to design and deliver deep retrofit through collaborations with social housing landlords and UK building firms. The aim is to use social housing as a catalyst to kick start the deep retrofit market utilising offsite manufacturing, which is currently a very small market in the UK.

Kada was commissioned to provide a Summative Assessment of the programme and a Recommendations Report to inform future domestic retrofit in London and the Mayor of London’s projects and programmes. The Summative Assessment was fully compliant with ERDF evaluation guidance and used a combination of primary and secondary research methods.

It blended qualitative and quantitative approaches including economic analysis, interviews with stakeholders and beneficiaries, and five case studies, and explored the challenges and opportunities for RA-H and RA-HIP, concluding with lessons learnt for policy makers, those designing similar interventions, social housing landlords and UK building firms providing retrofit solutions, and the delivery team.

For the Recommendations Report evidence from the Summative Assessment was used alongside interviews with stakeholders with an interest and expertise in decarbonisation in London and nationally.

The report considered the strategic context of retrofitting, lessons from RA-H and RA-HIP, and proposed bold recommendations for the future of retrofitting and energy efficiency policy in London and beyond.