A NATIONAL RETROFIT WORKFORCE STRATEGY
Client | NATIONAL RETROFIT HUB (NRH)
Project summary | A SYSTEMS APPROACH TO NATIONAL RETROFIT SKILLS
Pippa Palmer, Polln has been proud to sit as Co-Chair of the National Retrofit Hub’s Workforce Growth & Skills Development Working Group. After carrying out sector-wide systems analysis, research and consultations, our findings were distilled into 10 succinct policy asks. These were written into a collaborative publication - Policy Recommendations for National Retrofit Workforce Strategy - setting out a comprehensive analysis of the key issues, the scale of the task, the opportunity for jobs and community benefit, and the urgent actions needed across industry, education, and government.
Meeting the UK’s climate, energy, and economic goals will require the large scale retrofit of most of Britain’s homes. As well as making them warmer and more energy efficient, retrofit at scale will deliver significant co-benefits for the nation’s health, energy security and economic prosperity.
The task is enormous, and we are ill-prepared. The construction sector needs to increase delivery rates from c250,000 retrofits per year to 1.5 million per year by 2035 - that’s a six-fold increase across all housing tenures.
This means the UK is going to need a correspondingly rapid expansion of a skilled retrofit workforce - presenting a national challenge and a huge opportunity for job creation, community benefit, and economic growth across the UK.
The National Retrofit Hub (the Hub) is a nonprofit organisation working with the industry to enable this mission-critical delivery. The Hub has convened six thematic working groups, each chaired by recognised industry experts: 1) Warm, Health Net Zero, 2) Supply Chain Products & Solutions, 3) Workforce Growth & Skills Development, 4) Finance, 5) Delivery Approaches and 6) Driving Uptake.
GIVING SOMETHING BACK
It is central to Polln’s values to devote a proportion of our time and expertise to pro bono consultancy. Every year, we support a cause that aligns with our values - whether that’s advancing social justice, delivering a just energy transition, or helping to alleviate global poverty.
Given our already extensive portfolio of research into retrofit and retrofit skills, Pippa was proud to step forward to co-chair the Hub’s Workforce Growth & Skills Development (Group 3) alongside Cara Jenkinson of climate change charity, Ashden.
Project DETAILS | HOW WE APPROACHED THE NATIONAL RETROFIT SKILLS CHALLENGE
Our first task was to put out a call for evidence, inviting members to submit reports and case studies, especially those evidencing good practice.
We then conduct a comprehensive review of retrofit skill literature and analysed the information across four recognised domains: education and courses, sector forecasts, the skills pipelines, and factors that shape the workforce.
Adopting a systems approach, we set about mapping the retrofit skills space, revealing the many drivers and barriers within this complex multi-faceted, interconnected system, with its myriad stakeholders, legacy practices and siloes.
This detailed system mapping enabled us to identify the most likely leverage points for effective change - and six priority areas that warranted deeper exploration.
SIX TASK AND FINISH GROUPS - DERIVED FROM DETAILED SYSTEM MAPPING
From this analysis, we set about establishing 6 Task & Finish Groups (diagram above), with Cara leading Groups one to three, and Pippa leading Groups four to six: Procurement & Project practice, Workforce Growth & Resilience, Funding & Policy Asks.
Each co-chair convened a wide cohort of specialist experts, who took part in a series of discovery workshops and facilitated discussions in order to explore each specialist subject area in depth.
A National Oversight Group with representatives from Scotland, Wales, London, Regional Cities and the heritage sector helped sense check that the recommendations emerging from these Task & Finish Groups were apt across all devolved nations, educations systems and building archetypes.
The extensive findings were finally distilled into a Theory of Change for each Task and Finish Group, drawing out the critical leverage points that would effect systemic, enduring change. These were then further extrapolated into 10 policy asks for government and a series of recommendations for the sector, including radical changes in local authority approaches to procurement and skills building.
LOCAL AUTHORITY PROCUREMENT AND ITS ROLE IN SKILLS DEVELOPMENT
A key finding from the Procurement and Project Practice T&F Group research was that the current government grant funding structure for social housing retrofit is failing to drive the skills growth needed. A common mantra has been that stop/start funding cycles are the main cause as they fail to send consistent market signals and confidence that the supply chain needs in order to invest.
Our research found that continuity of funding - whilst a problem - is by far not the only problem. Nor is the solution simply a matter of giving market signals. Retrofit skills building is considerably more complex.
We found the government grant funding structure sits at the root of many issues, because of how funding structure drives procurement decision-making within local authorities. These multi-million pound government grants for social housing retrofit come - whilst welcome - come with demanding time frames and onerous compliance mandates, and this is instrumental in shaping how retrofit projects are procured - which in turn dictates how supply chains are formed, how risk and profit are managed, and whether or not local authorities are able to leverage their buying power to foster local skills building initiatives.
As our diagram (below) shows, the problem is cyclical, with tranches of funding landing in waves that are out of synch with the wider skills eco-system. Local authority procurement decisions are driven by the need for compliance, and to mitigate risk - making it ‘safer’ for grant holders to default to engaging Tier 1 contractors, who create a complex supply chain to deliver on their obligations - pushing local skills initiatives off the table.
This diagram from ‘Policy Recommendations for a National Workforce Strategy’ demonstrates how procurement and project practices, driven by government grant structure, keep the sector in a cycle whereby local skilled workforces fail to develop.
Source: C. Jenkinson, P. Palmer, Policy Recommendations for a National Workforce Strategy, National Retrofit Hub, 06/25
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.