Five Signals, One Window: Retrofit’s Most Dangerous 30 Days
Retrofit doesn’t need another strategy document. It needs a rumble.
In the next few weeks, five announcements will smash into each other: new rules for landlords, new standards for surveyors, new money signals from government, new promises from Labour, and new innovators shoved under the lights.
Meanwhile the press will keep running “net zero is broken” drivel. They’re wrong. Inside retrofit, the machinery is grinding into gear. Standards, politics, finance, and products are all about to move. If you’re not ready, you’re roadkill.
1. National Retrofit Hub: Words That Will Be Weaponised
The Hub is about to drop reports on MEES in private rented homes and a “definition” of community retrofit. Sounds dry? It isn’t.
Whatever language they print will get photocopied into tenders, policy briefings, and grant criteria. If your decks, websites and case studies don’t echo it, you’ll look like a relic. Match the words or get written out.
2. RICS at Labour Conference: Retrofit Goes Political
Surveyors don’t usually drink bad wine with cabinet ministers. This year they will.
RICS is dragging retrofit out of the technical basement and onto Labour’s political stage. This isn’t about kilowatts, it’s about credibility, standards, and votes. If your solution can’t scream quality and compliance, RICS won't even open the door.
3. Boiler Upgrade Scheme: The Budget Cage Fight
Everyone’s sitting on their hands waiting for the BUS outcome. Fair enough. But when the decision lands, it’ll be a bun fight.
The winners will have BUS-ready landing pages, customer explainers, and finance options locked and loaded. The losers will be scrambling to update their website while their competitors bank the orders.
4. Warm Homes Plan: From Tech Dreams to Human Need
Labour’s Warm Homes Plan isn’t about “net zero journeys.” It’s about tenants living in mould, pensioners in cold terraces, families staring at energy bills.
If you’re still selling on kilowatt-hours and payback charts, you’re speaking Martian. Translate retrofit into warmth, security, dignity. Or get ignored.
5. Wates Innovation Network: Spotlight or Black Hole
The Wates WIN will name its new crop of innovators. For a week, they’ll bask in LinkedIn glory. And then? Silence - unless they’ve lined up a story, a case study, or a short film to keep the oxygen flowing.
Innovation without amplification dies. Fast.
Five Signals, One Window. Don’t Waste It.
The headlines will keep sneering at net zero. Let them. While they sneer, retrofit is moving from slogans to delivery:
- Standards with teeth.
- Policies with money.
- Ministers on stage.
- Innovators in the spotlight.
Five signals, one window.
Use it. Or lose it.