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Retrofit: Finding a Middle Ground for Warmer Homes

02/06/2026

Andy Sutton

By Andy Sutton, …as architecture & Co‑Founder, Sero

For well over a decade, the UK’s approach to retrofit has been shaped by a simple hierarchy: improve the building fabric first, hopefully also factoring ventilation, and then replacing the fossil‑fuel heating systems. This “fabric first” principle has guided investment decisions, funding models and programme design across the social housing sector and beyond.

This approach ultimately stems from new build. Here, despite what the lobby groups might argue, passively integrating low energy demand into new homes remains a good starting principle: there is nothing lower carbon than the energy you don’t use. Something that the Future Homes Standard goes a disappointingly small way to recognising.

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Retrofit Society 2.0 Thermal Comfort

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