The National Retrofit Hub (NRH) is a nonprofit collaborative organisation working to bring together everyone involved in retrofit from policymakers and professionals to grassroots communities with one shared goal: to enable the local and equitable delivery of retrofit at scale.
The Hub’s approach rests on three pillars: convening, evidencing, and acting. We host workshops, meetings, and conversations that connect diverse voices; we gather and share data and insights to move the national conversation forward; and crucially, we support practical action helping turn discussion into tangible change on the ground. Our power is our network.
WHERE IT BEGAN: A VISION FROM 2023
The seeds for today’s work were sown in 2023, when one of NRH’s first objectives was set:
“Pathways for replicable community-driven retrofit initiatives are available and supported.”
That goal reflected an early commitment to making retrofit something communities can have agency in, design, and drive forward, not just something done to them. Over time, this vision grew out of insights from NRH’s working groups on delivery and uptake, captured in its State of the Nation review, which examined how retrofit was unfolding across the UK and what was holding it back.
THE SPARK: RETROFIT REIMAGINED
In 2022, before becoming co-directors with the NRH, Sara Edmonds & Rachael Owens’s journey intersected with Retrofit Reimagined, a festival convened by CIVIC SQUARE and partners in Birmingham. Despite the 40-degree heat, people gathered festival style in a field by a reservoir to ask hard questions:
- Why isn’t retrofit reaching our communities?
- Why is funding being returned to the Treasury unused?
- What could retrofit look like if designed, owned, and governed by the people who live in these neighbourhoods?
Those conversations that were rooted in curiosity, frustration, and hope forged relationships that endured. When Retrofit Reimagined went on tour in 2023, taking the discussion to cities across the country, the idea of community-led climate and retrofit action began to crystallise. By then, the NRH had connected as a partner.
TURNING IDEAS INTO ACTION: THE STREET DEMONSTRATOR PROGRAMME
In 2024, Civic Square invited NRH to co-create a Street Demonstrator and Incubator Programme; a live experiment in what happens when communities themselves lead the charge on retrofit.
The NRH’s role was to support three “street demonstrators” in Birmingham (CIVIC SQUARE and Retrofit Balsall Heath), Bristol (We Can Make), and connect other partners alongside six “street incubators” across the country, including projects in Stoke, Liverpool, Grimsby, London, Wessex, and Cheltenham.
Each one is testing real-world questions, including:
- What governance models can communities leverage?
- How to fund and finance local retrofit?
- How can low-carbon materials, design choices, and local skills all work together?
CREATING THE INFRASTRUCTURE: RETROFIT CONNECT
To hold and support this work, NRH created Retrofit Connect, a collaborative workspace that acts as the learning and support infrastructure for the Street Demonstrator Programme.
Retrofit Connect builds on the central idea of Retrofit Reimagined:
“What if the climate transition and retrofit of our homes and streets were designed, owned, and governed by the people who live there?”
It’s a deliberate shift away from seeing residents as passive “consumers” and towards recognising them as active agents in shaping the future of their places.
Retrofit Connect does this through:
- Sponge Sessions: NRH listens deeply to community needs, identifying where to focus support.
- Peer Learning & Visits: Street projects meet regularly to share insights and strengthen collective capacity, in-person learning sessions on active retrofit sites, connecting theory with practice.
- Deep Dive Clinics: Focused sessions on key themes like bio-based materials, community governance, and training.
BRIDGING TWO WORLDS: THE RETROFIT COMMUNITY OF INDUSTRY
From this work, an opportunity became clear: communities needed access to specialist expertise at critical points in their projects, and professionals needed better ways to engage with real, grounded projects.
In response, NRH launched the Retrofit Community of Industry, a nationwide network of designers, engineers, policy experts, and funders willing to connect their skills to community innovators.
Participation is flexible: members can share resources, contribute knowledge, or take part in short roundtables or mentoring. It’s designed to bridge the worlds of lived experience and technical expertise, without demanding heavy commitments.
BUILDING POLICY AND PRACTICE TOGETHER
Alongside its practical programmes, NRH also runs a Community Retrofit Cross-Cutting Theme, which looks at the policy side of community retrofit, identifying opportunities and challenges, sharing case studies, and developing recommendations for fairer systems. Coordinated by partners including the Centre for Sustainable Energy, Home Energy Action Lab, and People Powered Retrofit, this group is producing an Insights Paper on how policy can better enable community action.
LESSONS LEARNED: TRUST AND AGENCY
Perhaps the most powerful lesson so far is that trust is the currency of successful retrofit. Too often top down systems unintentionally infantilise neighbourhoods assuming expertise only exists outside them. In reality, residents hold deep knowledge about their homes, their needs, and their priorities.
Communities can, and must, be trusted to lead, in ways that are relevant and responsible. What they need is not permission, but infrastructure, investment, and partnership that recognises their capacity and potential.
A COLLECTIVE CALL TO ACTION
Retrofit Connect, the Street Demonstrator & Incubator Programme, and the Retrofit Community of Industry are all parts of one living ecosystem movement to make community-led retrofit the norm, not the exception.
NRH is inviting professionals, policymakers, and local groups alike to join the network, share resources, and take part in shaping how this transition happens together.
As one film from the programme showed, at the Portland Inn Project in Stoke, community members have learned about materials, questioned design choices, and built a shared sense of pride and ownership. It’s proof that retrofit can be more than technical; it can be a tool for renewal, empowerment, and justice.
“People see themselves in this building already,” the Portland Inn Project team said, “They’ve been on this journey with us and created it with us.”
That, ultimately, is what NRH through Retrofit Connect is working to nurture: a future where the retrofit of our homes and streets is not just something done to communities, but something done with them, for everyone’s benefit.
