Retrofit’s Reckoning: The Audit, the Axes, and the Arc of Hope

They punched your Mum in the face. Then when the ambulance came, they took the wheels off.

That’s what happened to Britain’s homes under ECO4 and GBIS.

A programme meant to heal the country’s leaky walls and cold rooms became a patchwork of botched fixes and broken promises. And now, word on the street is that TrustMark might be biting the bullet.

But are they really the villains, or just the fall guys for a system rigged for failure?

Because let’s be honest: the warning signs were there. Training academies that failed to train. Assessors rubber-stamping retrofit plans they never visited. Expert installers carrying the weight of a litany of rogues.

The Government’s own words confirm the scale of collapse:

“Results show that 92% of External Wall Insulation installations and 27% of Internal Wall Insulation installations… were found to have at least one major technical non-compliance.”

Rounded up, 9 out of every 10 didn't work. Tens of thousands of households thought they were getting warmer homes. Instead, they got cold bridges, damp corners, and blown plaster.
As the statement admits:

“In the most severe cases, this has led to damage to homes, including serious problems with mould and damp.”

The System Was Sick — Now the Surgeons Are Coming

When the oversight body itself reports 92% failure rates, the problem isn’t a few bad apples it’s the orchard.

TrustMark, Ofgem, Certification Bodies, all part of an oversight machine described by the new Government as “fragmented, privatised, and with weak oversight.”

They’re not wrong. Each organisation was designed to protect consumers, but no one held the reins. As the statement puts it bluntly:

“Too many organisations, often with overlapping roles and responsibilities, make it more difficult for consumers to obtain redress when work is defective.”

The result? A decade of box-ticking, where compliance trumped competence and paperwork replaced proof.

But this time feels different. The tone from Government isn’t defensive. It’s surgical.

“We will change all of this… Instead of a multitude of organisations with overlapping responsibilities, we will have clear centralised oversight.”

The knives are being sharpened. And for once, that might be good news.

The Reckoning

Expect this: a system-wide cull of quasi-governmental organisations, those “nursing on the teat of public funds,” as one official in the Department privately admitted.

Whether it’s CICs, certification bodies, or training academies, the writing is on the wall:

“We are bringing forward comprehensive reforms to make [the system] stronger, more transparent, and more accountable, so that this cannot happen again.”

In plain English: TrustMark, the Certification Bodies, and even some publicly funded intermediaries are now fair game. No matter what you think of this or the last Government, both sides see a political win in swinging the axe.

And honestly, who can blame them? If 92% of the most visible retrofit measure on the public record is found to be non-compliant, heads should roll.

But this doesn’t need to be a bloodbath. There are green shoots of hope in this soil, and they’re worth protecting.

The Green Shoots

Because here’s what else the audit found:

“There is no widespread problem within the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, Home Upgrade Grant, or Local Authority Delivery schemes.”

That’s huge. It proves that where oversight was closer to the ground with local authorities, social landlords, and community delivery partners, quality held up.

Reports of our demise have been greatly exaggerated, because this isn’t the death of retrofit. It’s the death of outsourced accountability.

Local delivery, transparent oversight, and long-term stewardship of homes: these are the green shoots pushing through the cracks.

We’ve seen it in retrofit partnerships like Cornwall Council’s HUG programme, where PAS 2035 was actually followed. We’ve seen it in local authorities like Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol, and Birmingham, building in-house retrofit teams rather than farming it out to middlemen.

That’s what the new system should look like, retrofit with roots.

The Rebrand

But beyond the technical reforms, there’s a cultural challenge too.

Retrofit has been branded to death schemes, logos, badges, acronyms but it’s never been repackaged for the public - (we brought this up way back in 2024).

People don’t want to hear about ECO4 or PAS 2035. They want to know:
Will my house be warmer? Will it last? Will it be done right?

If we want to restore trust, we need to stop talking in frameworks and start talking in feelings. Retrofit isn’t about insulation, it’s about dignity, comfort, and cost of living.

As the statement itself recognises:

“Home upgrades are one of the best ways to get bills down for families, to cut bills and deliver warmer homes.”

That’s the story that wins hearts.
And that’s the story our industry needs to tell again — through evidence, through honesty, and through real people’s homes.

From Spiral to Spitfire

The risk now is political.

Populists smell blood. The “greenlash” brigade will seize on these audits as proof that retrofit is a con, that the green transition is all gravy for consultants and misery for the poor.

But that’s smoke and mirrors. The truth is simpler: climate change is here, and housing remains the front line.

We can’t let the narrative nose-dive into cynicism. If the old oversight system is crashing, then someone has to pull the stick back into a Spitfire arc of joy.

We’ve done it before.
The town gas conversion in the 1960-70s rewired 14 million homes in a decade. No apps. No acronyms. Just urgency, organisation, and public trust.

So let’s not mourn ECO4’s failure let’s learn from it. Let’s use the wreckage to build something real: A system that works first time. A workforce that’s proud, trained, and trusted. And an industry that doesn’t punch people in the face and call it progress.

The Arc of Hope

The Government says it wants “a single system of oversight for retrofit work with consistent standards and processes for installers.”

If they mean it and deliver it this could be the turning point retrofit has needed for years.

Because trust isn’t just a word in a logo. It’s what happens when work is right first time, when redress is swift, and when oversight means something.

The knives are out. But if we hold our nerve, this could be the moment retrofit finally becomes what it was meant to be a national act of repair.