Across East London, something quietly significant is happening. Homes that once leaked heat, pushed families into fuel poverty, and contributed to the region’s carbon footprint are being transformed – and the work taking place through the Sustainable Construction Programme is helping to show what neighbourhood-scale retrofit can really look like.
Over the past months, we’ve been proud to work alongside the councils of Barking & Dagenham, Havering and Thurrock, and our partners: Rainmaking, Energiesprong UK, E.ON, and Risehem, to deliver the first phase of our retrofit workstream.
Header Image credit Energiesprong UK
A new model for retrofit – at neighbourhood scale
The central barrier with retrofit has never solely been technical, it’s been about doing it at scale, affordably, and in a way that works for real people, in real homes. Starting in Barking & Dagenham (with Havering and Thurrock to follow shortly), we’ve been developing and testing a retrofit model designed to enable thousands of households to live in higher-energy performing homes and reduce their bills.
The goal? Getting families out of fuel poverty, improving health outcomes, and generating clean energy that whole communities can benefit from.
The scale of this challenge is significant, across Barking and Dagenham, Havering, and Thurrock, approximately 145,000 homes require energy efficiency upgrades (the majority rated EPC D or below) and around 22% of households in Barking and Dagenham alone are estimated to be in fuel poverty. For decades, the pace of change has been constrained by fragmented public grant funding, disjointed supply chains, and delivery models that simply weren’t built for scale. The programme has been about testing whether a fundamentally different approach is possible: treating retrofit not as a localised construction problem, but as a regional industrialisation opportunity.
We’ve been developing and testing a new approach to retrofit, amongst this we delivered a demonstrator home using the Transform-ER retrofit model, funded by Innovate UK and delivery partners. This approach is designed to enable thousands of households to live in higher-energy performing homes and reduce their bills, at a much faster rate.
The approach brings together three things that don’t always come as a package:
- New technologies and manufacturing methods that can deliver energy efficiency measures at pace and scale;
- A finance model that enables deployment with no upfront cost to residents, while keeping overall costs affordable;
- High-performing, innovative solutions designed around real-life constraints, like living space, so that all residents can benefit, not just those in homes that happen to be easy to retrofit.
Innovative Technology in Action
By establishing a live testbed in Barking and Dagenham and deploying new technologies, data tools, and commercial models in real homes alongside our partners, we’ve built the foundation for a programme capable of decarbonising thousands of homes across the region, with the ambition to scale significantly further over time. Some of these innovative solutions tackle persistent challenges around data, performance, and delivery at scale, they include:
- AI-enabled 3D drone scanning (Planarific): (Image credit – 3D Scan, Planarific)
Traditional housing surveys are time-consuming and often inaccurate. Planarific’s drone scanning technology provides high-detail housing data that makes retrofit planning far more strategic and precise, a critical foundation for any programme operating at scale.
- Integrated retrofit solution (Ultrapanel Building Technologies):
Ultrapanel’s custom-fit thermal panels and offsite-manufactured external wall insulation represent a step-change in how EWI is delivered. Designed for faster installation with minimal disruption to residents, this approach challenges the assumption that effective retrofit has to mean weeks of upheaval.
- Ventilated external battery storage (Bow Tie Construction): (Image Credit – Battery Box, Bow Tie Construction)
Energy storage is often a sticking point, particularly in homes where space is limited. Bow Tie’s ventilated external battery units resolve this, while also being designed for future heat pump integration.
These measures have already made a tangible difference, with one council home upgrading from EPC D to EPC A in just four weeks, a remarkable result that points to what becomes possible when the right technologies and partnerships come together. Crucially, the work has also demonstrated that doing this at scale is financeable, opening the door to the kind of institutional investment that public funding alone could never unlock.
– With one council home upgrading from EPC D to EPC A in four weeks (delivered by the Transform-ER consortium)
What We’ve Learned Along the Way
Programmes of this ambition don’t deliver themselves, and we’ve picked up some important lessons through the process:
- Real collaboration is non-negotiable.
A programme at this scale only works when every partner is genuinely committed. That means leaning in – sharing data, making decisions together, and being willing to adapt. The quality of partnership across this programme has been one of its defining strengths.
- Keep residents at the centre.
The biggest impact comes from focusing on what actually improves life day-to-day for the people living in these homes, and bringing them along on the journey, rather than doing retrofit to them. When residents feel heard and involved, the results are better for everyone.
- High performance doesn’t have to mean high disruption.
This is perhaps the most important message for the industry. Energy measures that genuinely work that deliver real comfort and real savings, can be installed with minimal intrusion.
Inspiring the Next Generation
The programme has also been about more than homes and energy systems. At Future Youth Zone in Barking and Dagenham, we had the pleasure of hosting a hands-on “Living Energy” workshop, facilitated by bio designer and researcher Lucia Giron, where 30 young people aged 12 to 18 built their own biological power sources using soil and algae, competing to see who could generate the most energy.
The session was everything we hoped it would be practical, collaborative, competitive, and fun. Creating opportunities like this, where young people from the community can get hands-on with new technologies and ideas, has been an important part of the programme. It’s been a way to spark curiosity and inspire the next generation of renewable energy professionals, who will help drive the region’s ongoing transformation and wider economy.
What Comes Next
This is the first phase of something much larger. As the programme expands to Havering and Thurrock, and as the technologies and models, we’ve been trialling continue to mature, the potential for meaningful, lasting impact across the region grows significantly.
The case for neighbourhood-scale retrofit, done properly, with the right partners and the right technology, has never been stronger and we are excited about what comes next.
