Developing a Regional Domestic Retrofit Strategy and Action Plan

Urban Foresight has been appointed by the North East Combined Authority to develop a Regional Domestic Retrofit Strategy and Action Plan, a practical blueprint to help scale up home retrofit across the region.

The Strategy will set out a clear, evidence-led pathway to improving the energy efficiency of homes, reducing emissions, and helping more households live in warmer, healthier properties with lower energy bills. It will also support the region’s wider ambitions on net zero, inclusive growth, and tackling fuel poverty.

Turning ambition into delivery

Domestic retrofit is one of the biggest delivery challenges facing local and regional partners. The North East has a large stock of older homes and many households facing high energy costs, making action both urgent and complex

The North East Mayor has declared dual missions to deliver ‘A North East we are proud to call home’ and position the region as the ‘Home of the green energy revolution’. Her manifesto includes a commitment to retrofit more homes, particularly in the social and private rented sectors, to make the region’s existing housing stock greener, warmer and cheaper to run. These outcomes can also contribute to tackling child poverty, creating jobs and building a skilled local workforce.

Urban Foresight’s approach recognises that accelerating retrofit requires coordinated whole systems change across homes, finance, skills, governance, supply chains and community engagement.

What the Strategy will cover

Our place-based approach will be anchored in Local Area Retrofit Accelerator (LARA) processes. Working with the North East Warm Homes Taskforce, we will run a co-design process involving stakeholders across the retrofit ecosystem.

We’ll use stakeholder interviews, workshops and collaborative review to engage with local authorities, training providers, businesses in the retrofit supply chain, social and private landlords, health practitioners, community organisations, and individual families living in relevant properties.

This engagement will allow us to:

• build a shared evidence base on housing need, fuel poverty, delivery capacity, and local opportunities
• map delivery barriers and enabling actions, including skills, finance, governance and customer engagement
• co-design a long-term regional vision and near-term priorities with stakeholders
• develop a costed, prioritised Action Plan with clear roles for partners
• propose a monitoring and review approach so the Strategy can evolve as policy and funding changes

This approach is intended to build shared ownership, so the final Strategy is not just a document, but a tool that partners can use to guide decisions, attract investment, and coordinate action.

About Urban Foresight

This projects builds on Urban Foresight’s experience working with key stakeholders across the North East CA region, and on our ability to combine technical insight, whole-systems thinking and practical delivery capability. These principles underpin our work, from local area energy planning and retrofit-focused interventions, to national capacity building programmes.

Contact us to find out how we can help on your net zero journey.