Retrofit advice services in England

Full project title: Retrofit active services in England (as part of the Low carbon residential retrofit project)

Duration: May 2025-August 2025

Sponsored by:

• UWE Bristol Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) scheme, project ID: HEIFSI24251
• Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), grant number: ES/Z504099/1

Project lead: Dr Freya Wise

CABER project team: Benjamin Duffy

Reducing carbon from existing homes through retrofitting is critical to meeting the UK’s climate goals. It can also reduce energy bills, improve resilience and make buildings healthier and more comfortable places to live. However, research has shown that accessing high quality information is a substantial barrier to households wishing to retrofit their homes. This is mainly because much of the information available is generic and knowledge about different retrofit measures is siloed. It is therefore hard to find specific advice about the retrofits that would be appropriate for your home. 

Some services providing tailored and individual advice -which we differentiate from generic information- are starting to appear and sometimes also include other project management services. However coverage is patchy, and it can be hard to identify what is available in your area. 

This research project has mapped advice services in England and identified areas that are well or poorly served. The final map and instructions are below, and you can also download the report with the full project findings and access the spreadsheet listing all the services. We hope that this map will be useful for households considering retrofit and for policy makers and professionals who are interested in what services are available in different areas. 

This resource was created as part of a wider project by Dr Freya Wise that is investigating multiple aspects of retrofit.

• The study found that there was substantial variation in the scope, quality and cost of services available in different areas, leading to a clear postcode lottery.
•  Just under half of the identified services offer support such as planning and project management. However, these services generally lacked pre/post retrofit performance monitoring which is important if the benefits of retrofit are to be realised. 
• The numbers of homes supported (which were available for a subset of services) are still well below the levels required to support the rapid acceleration of retrofit that is needed in the UK.

• View the retrofit advice services map
• View/Download the project report (PDF)
• View the detailed list of services

The map in the link above shows the currently available retrofit advice services in England. To use this resource, select the desired county marker to find the available services within the selected county. The information about services includes:

• organisation/service provider name
• service type
• webpage link
• overview (including geographic coverage and detail of service provided)
• cost ranges (where available)
• webpage useability/readability. 

The webpage useability/readability of the services was scored from 1-10 based on ease of information finding, layout, clarity, and use of unexplained terms and technical language. 1 = is the least useful and 10 = the most useful, the full scoring criteria can be accessed within the Excel workbook.

• Pure advice: Tailored retrofit advice to individual homes. 
• Whole house planning: A dedicated service to assess a home and create a comprehensive plan of multiple retrofit measures for households to consider and arrange to carry out. 
• One-stop shop: A comprehensive retrofit support service, often offering assessments, planning and support carrying out retrofit process such as identifying tradespeople, project management and financing options. 

Acronyms in the map

• N/A = Not applicable
• NDA = No data available
• LA = Local Authority

This resource excludes services that solely provide government-funded retrofit support such as the Warm Homes: Local Grant scheme, unless there were other retrofit advice/planning/one-stop shop services offered by the local authorities in the same county/borough (Greater London). 270 local authorities in England have Warm Homes funding. View the full list of Warm Homes.

This is also true for energy company-funded schemes. These schemes were also excluded unless they explicitly stated that they implement the retrofit measures and if a dedicated webpage for the scheme application could not be found.  This resource does not include private companies/consultancies. 

This resource was created on 31 July 2025 and is up-to-date as of that time. While every effort has been made to make this list as comprehensive as possible some services may have been missed. This resource provides no quality assessment or assurances on services and neither the authors, nor UWE Bristol can accept any liability for the quality or completeness of the services listed. The resource is the result of a research project and provided purely for informational purposes.

If you have any questions about this resource, please contact Dr Freya Wise (freya.wise@uwe.ac.uk).