RETROFIT Scotland has been relaunched at the International Retrofit Conference in a bid to scale neighbourhood retrofit delivery.
Delivered by Built Environment – Smarter Transformation (BE-ST), the programme aims to help reduce carbon emissions and improve the quality of housing across Scotland to make neighbourhoods warmer, healthier, and more energy-efficient.
Retrofitting homes is described as essential to meeting the country’s 2045 net zero targets, improving the health and comfort of Scotland’s citizens, and reducing the burden on the NHS.
Retrofit Scotland aims to connect industry leaders, academics, community groups, and government partners, to work together on practical ways to improve Scotland’s built environment. The programme offers a range of services including retrofit training, access to co-working and events spaces for collaboration/workshops/prototyping, and retrofit consultancy to provide advice and support for projects to accelerate the delivery of retrofit solutions.
Retrofit Scotland was originally founded in 2013 through a collaboration of organisations. It emerged from the 2020 Built Environment group and was committed to the development of Scotland’s National Retrofit Programme.
Stephen Good, CEO at BE-ST said, “Today’s relaunch of Retrofit Scotland is a significant milestone in enabling Scotland’s built environment industry to accelerate and scale capacity for delivering retrofit by offering the simple, practical tools and services needed to do it well. The transition to net zero is a key opportunity to improve outcomes for communities and citizens across Scotland; retrofit in particular not only helps to tackle the climate emergency, it’s also a lever for bettering quality of life by making homes warmer and healthier. This is an opportunity that we need to make sure we don’t miss.”
