The UK housing sector has spent years developing retrofit strategies, policies and pilot programmes. But 2026 must be the year those ambitions turn into delivery at scale.

Funding programmes are opening, expectations across government are rising and the pressure to demonstrate measurable progress is growing. Yet ambition alone will not decarbonise homes, cut energy bills or improve living conditions for residents.

What matters now is delivery.

From policy ambition to delivery

Housing providers and local authorities now face a critical transition from strategy to implementation. Grants available through initiatives such as the Warm Homes: Social Housing Fund are creating significant opportunities to improve the performance of existing homes. However, accessing funding is only one part of the challenge. Delivering retrofit at scale requires organisations to have robust plans, strong partnerships and the internal capability to turn funding into measurable outcomes.

Without that readiness, there is a real risk the sector will struggle to translate policy ambition into delivery. Funding windows may open, but without clear pipelines of projects and the organisational capacity to manage them, programmes can stall or underperform. In other words, the ability to prepare credible bids and develop delivery ready retrofit programmes is becoming just as important as the funding itself.

Support programmes are emerging to help organisations navigate this complexity. The government funded Retrofit Information, Support and Expertise (RISE) service provides guidance, training and technical support to housing providers and local authorities delivering retrofit programmes. To date, RISE has supported almost 300 local authorities and more than 450 registered providers, alongside over 40 retrofit consortia. The programme has helped organisations unlock more than £3bn in retrofit funding and supported delivery plans covering over 315,000 homes, while training more than 7,000 people across the sector.

These figures demonstrate the scale of ambition already emerging across the housing sector. But they also highlight the challenge ahead. Delivering retrofit at scale requires not only funding and policy direction but also confidence across organisations, supply chains and residents.

Residents at the centre of retrofit

Equally important is the role of residents. Retrofit interventions take place within people’s homes, and the success of any programme depends on the trust and engagement of those living there. Clear communication, transparency around disruption and genuine collaboration with residents can significantly improve uptake and long-term outcomes.

Evidence from one of our past projects highlights how important this approach is in practice. Retrofit works can test residents’ patience and create temporary disruption, but these challenges were mitigated through clear and continuous communication. Keeping residents informed about progress, explaining what was happening and ensuring they understood the benefits helped to build trust and transparency. This consistent, respectful engagement proved essential in maintaining consent and cooperation throughout a long-term retrofit project.

Building the workforce for large scale retrofit

One of the most pressing barriers remains workforce capacity. Retrofitting the UK’s housing stock is a labour-intensive process that requires a skilled and accredited workforce across multiple disciplines, from retrofit coordinators and assessors to installers and building specialists. Research from Energy Systems Catapult suggests that tens of thousands of skilled workers will be required annually to deliver retrofit programmes across the country. In the South East alone, around 46,500 full time equivalent workers could be needed each year to meet projected demand, with national retrofit activity potentially requiring around 100,000 workers annually when the full scale of delivery is considered.

Developing that workforce will require a significant expansion of training and accreditation pathways. Current systems can be fragmented, with varying qualification requirements and limited training capacity. Addressing these gaps will require coordinated action between government, industry and training providers to ensure the workforce of the future is both sufficiently large and appropriately skilled.

Moving beyond compliance

Beyond workforce challenges, the sector must also move away from treating retrofit as a short-term compliance exercise. Too often, retrofit programmes are framed as isolated projects designed to meet specific funding criteria or regulatory targets. In reality, retrofit should be embedded within long term asset management strategies that consider the whole life performance of homes.

For housing providers, this means improving the quality and availability of property level data. Understanding building fabric, energy performance and occupancy patterns is essential to targeting investment effectively. Without accurate data, retrofit programmes risk prioritising the wrong homes, delivering suboptimal improvements or requiring costly remedial work in the future. 

Collaboration and supply chain confidence

Across the sector, collaboration will also be essential. Housing providers, local authorities, contractors, consultants and supply chain partners all have a role to play in scaling retrofit delivery. Sharing lessons, coordinating programmes and building long term supply chain confidence will help reduce risk and accelerate progress. For the supply chain in particular, confidence depends on certainty, scale and consistency of demand rather than a series of short-term competitive funding cycles.

Forums that bring these groups together will play an important role in maintaining momentum and sharing knowledge. Many of these issues will be explored further at the National Retrofit Conference at Futurebuild, where policymakers, housing leaders and delivery partners will come together to discuss how the UK can accelerate retrofit delivery and overcome the practical barriers that remain.

The cost of delay

The stakes are high. Delaying retrofit does not simply postpone investment. It also carries financial and social consequences. Poorly performing homes contribute to fuel poverty, health challenges and rising energy costs for residents. At the same time, postponing upgrades today increases the scale and cost of work that will eventually be required to meet climate commitments.

Retrofit is therefore not only an environmental priority. It is also a social and economic one.

The housing sector has already laid much of the groundwork required to support this transition. Strategies have been developed, funding streams are emerging and delivery frameworks are beginning to mature. The challenge now is to convert that groundwork into sustained, large-scale delivery that can build a stable and investable retrofit market across the UK.

In that sense, 2026 will be a test of the sector’s ability to move from ambition to action. It will reveal whether we can turn years of policy development and pilot programmes into a stable, investable retrofit market capable of delivering improvements at the scale the UK requires.

The opportunity is open now. The question for the housing sector is whether we are prepared to act while the window for delivery is still within reach.

By Claire Brown, Senior Consultant at Turner & Townsend and subject matter expert within the government funded RISE programme, which provides guidance, training and technical expertise to organisations delivering large scale retrofit programmes across the UK.