Drawing on more than 25 years of experience across the UK energy efficiency and retrofit sector, our response supports the ambition to strengthen consumer protection, improve accountability and help ensure work is delivered right first time.
A central theme of our submission is that the sector’s challenges are not simply caused by a lack of standards. Significant frameworks already exist. The bigger issue is how consistently those requirements are interpreted, applied, evidenced, monitored and enforced across the many organisations involved in retrofit delivery.
We believe reform should therefore focus on better assurance, not simply more compliance.
Our response supports a more preventative and continuous approach to quality, from assessment and design through to installation, completion, monitoring, remediation and redress.
The principles underpinning our response include:
- preventing problems rather than correcting them retrospectively;
- collecting information once and reusing it appropriately;
- ensuring information follows the property and installation;
- applying assurance according to risk;
- making accountability follow control and responsibility;
- prioritising remediation before compensation where reasonably possible;
- and giving consumers one clear, coherent journey even where multiple organisations sit behind it.
We also highlighted the importance of keeping the future system proportionate and practical for competent installers, retrofit professionals, local authorities, housing providers and SMEs.
For us, the ultimate test of reform is simple: does it deliver better outcomes for consumers while enabling responsible organisations to deliver high-quality retrofit efficiently and at scale?