Retrofit – We need new stories…

Recently the reading I’ve been doing is about the meaning of home or, really, the meanings of home. Cumulatively it can feel a bit like the scene in ‘Being John Malkovich’ where John is in a restaurant surrounded by people who are all variations of him, all talking but the only word they say is Malkovich. The word ‘home’ starts to blur as it gets repeated over and over and over and. It feels like the words fold into each other, until the meaning starts to go or it all becomes quite Malkovich, Malkovich. That could just be because I’m marinating myself in the subject but it’s also made me reflect on what turns those lists and frameworks into things that are useful and used.

Reading Jeanne Moore’s (2000) piece ‘Placing home in context’, I think she’s great at setting out a variety of ways in which the meaning of home has shifted over time, and how it can vary across countries. How different disciplines have engaged with the idea of home and how meanings of and feelings about home have been represented. It’s a bit of a speedy romp through the subject so it’s more about breadth than depth.

She does draw together lots of lists and frameworks that have been developed to try and capture the meaning of home. Seeing so many of them together in one short article makes her reflection that lists ‘imply all meanings are equally experienced, and do not encourage a focus on the relationships between items’ more apt. A sense there are so many different ways of describing what comes through as quite a consistent set of messages. Lots of overlap and commonality between them, with Putnam & Newton (1990) finding that privacy; security; family; intimacy; comfort, and control consistently appear in research about the meaning of home. Other lists have the same words or similar meanings, which perhaps isn’t so surprising, at least for those lists and frameworks that are talking about a suggested ideal of home.

I went to the Museum of Home for their event ‘More Than a Place: Centre for Studies of Home Annual Lecture 2026’ which was a talk and Q&A with Katie McCrory exploring what she describes as the eight universal emotions that come together to create ‘a feeling of home’. This work is based upon the Life at Home report by IKEA, and in the book she identifies ‘comfort, control, security, accomplishment, belonging, nurture, enjoyment and aspiration’ as the eight emotions. Plenty of venn diagram overlap there with other lists and frameworks too.

Within an academic context I can see that lists and frameworks provide scaffolding for thought and a way to organise and reflect findings. A drawing together of what’s been learned and found, a chance to reflect on how those findings relate to the wider literature – findings suggested x which differs from the previous literature in y scenarios. Trying to represent and honour what’s been found in a way that some other literature might not quite feel it does, even that which can appear to be similar. So if people talk about security rather than privacy, it would make sense that security is the word that’s used, even though the sentiments might be analogous to another piece of research where people talked in the language of privacy. The weight of different words can vary from person to person and so when analysing the research, in the absence of anything within the wording which explicitly suggests one or other of those choices, different researchers might lean towards one rather than the other. Over time, the development of the frameworks and lists helps build up an understanding of an area and that can develop into recommendations and more directional proposals.

From a policy and practitioner perspective, I’m conscious that lots of reading I’ve done which suggests a framework has been developed, has seemed hard to translate into practice. Thinking about frameworks I’ve used in a policy or delivery context, they would be ones that have some actions or processes attached to them. There would have been underpinning research which led to the development of the list of criteria. No doubt there could be the same questions about why some options or wording were selected rather than others but when it’s accompanied by input which allows the framework to be used, rightly or wrongly, that can feel less of a pressing concern. Or at least, if the framework itself feels useful, if it seems totally bonkers then that’s obviously something else altogether.

Having a sense of who I want the work to help and what they might need, then helps shift some of that Malkovich, Malkovich energy. Given I’m intending to develop a framework as part of the outputs of my research it’s useful to have in mind more of a sense of where I want to be aiming towards. It helps explain why lots of the ones I’ve seen haven’t felt very satisfactory, that I find myself asking ‘and then what?’ about them. Being able to take a step back from the lists and lists, and indeed the lists of lists, to see the aspects that are common across those and why and where there might be gaps. Holding in mind that it is about being able to translate those lists and frameworks into action and activity that’s useful, rather than feeling like what I’m trying to do is come up with one list to rule them all. How to do that is another question, for another day, but having a sharper idea of what I’m away towards is very clarifying.

I was yesterday day’s old when I discovered there’s no qualification to become a Retrofit Evaluator. Niche insight but it opened up a bit of a Pandora’s Box because under the British standard for retrofit – PAS 2035 – any evaluation of a retrofit should be completed by a suitably qualified Retrofit Evaluator. If there’s no qualification that can be done to get qualified, I think we can agree it’s hard to see how that is possible. In practice, what this means is the Retrofit Co-ordinator, another role under PAS 2035, and one that does have a qualification available does the evaluation.

In some respects perhaps not so surprising – monitoring and evaluation is an area most would agree is important in any context, yet it’s the area that is more likely to fall away than most. Whether because it’s for a project that is over-stretched, under resourced or behind schedule, evaluation is rarely seen as a core focus. Or the next project is getting scoped up and approved before there’s time to complete a proper evaluation of previous projects that might feed in to the development of the next project. So the fact there isn’t a qualification for this role is less of a concern than it might be for the actual installer roles.

Yet this role without a route to being meaningfully undertaken feels like such a symptom or metaphor for longstanding issues within the retrofit sector. The ongoing performance gap issue is one that has been long recognised but, as the recent 2025 National Audit Report (NAO) on energy efficiency installations showed, hasn’t been fully dealt with. Poor quality works, homes left worse off than they were before the works were undertaken because of mould and damp, affecting the health of the occupants and the fabric of the building itself. The NAO report itself found that 98% of homes that had external wall insulation installed under the Energy Company Obligation and Great British Insulation Scheme have got significant issues requiring remediation.

These issues arise in large amount because of a lack of attention, or ability, to deliver good quality works and ensure the details are right. Good processes, with monitoring and evaluation built in, can really help address or prevent issues. They can draw attention to areas where the work isn’t quite right and allow them to be improved or redone whilst the works are ongoing. Post-completion, they can identify issues with the works before they become much more serious. The intention is also that the Retrofit Evaluator can share lessons learned and areas for improvement with the installer to help them upskill people for subsequent projects.

More widely, in a context where approaches, products and technology are being developed, monitoring and evaluating their performance is crucial. Understanding how they work in practice, if they are easy to work with or need some workarounds to try and integrate them. Finding out how occupants respond, if they are easy for them to use or not. As more heat pumps have been installed in a great variety of homes, including ones that aren’t so well insulated, it’s become clear performance is better in a wider range of use cases than had previously been considered. That makes a massive difference in terms of the level of insulation needed for a home, with knock-on implications in terms of disruption and cost for the home-owner, and resourcing requirements for the supply chain. Without the monitoring and evaluation it’s harder to be confident in a particular approach and the status quo assumptions and actions are more likely to be considered.

What then is the workaround for the lack of a Retrofit Evaluator? As things stand, the Retrofit Co-ordinator now has to fulfil this role. They get to mark their own homework. If the basic level of feedback identifies any issues, they then have to escalate the evaluation to a more in-depth level. This would be undertaken by another Retrofit Co-ordinator. However, this requires them to do that escalation process. The worry is that in practice there might not be incentives to do so, or the quality assurance and monitoring of their work to pick up the cases when they don’t.

If there wasn’t a consistent drum-beat of stories and reports raising concerns about the quality of retrofit work undertaken, it might feel like that was an unfair assumption. Against that background, it feels like another reflection of a sector that recognises the need to change and improve – hence the development of the role in theory Yet it remains a sector that continues to struggle to address fundamental aspects around quality and reliability of the work it’s doing. Undermining trust, the health and well-being of people and their homes, and the ability of their work to get close to delivering the environmental and financial benefits people are paying for.

Tag: Retrofit

Lists of lists

Why try harder?