The Local Area Retrofit Accelerator

The Backdrop

The UK’s housing retrofit system is not currently operating at the scale or speed required to reduce carbon emissions to meet our climate targets and commitments. Despite isolated successes, fragmented policy, funding, and delivery landscapes have created a series of disconnected initiatives, stalling progress and leaving millions in damp, cold homes which are expensive to heat and unhealthy to live in as well as bad for the planet.

Against this backdrop, the Local Area Retrofit Accelerator (LARA) project was developed by decarbonisation charity, the MCS Foundation, to explore how a systems-based, collaborative approach could help accelerate and align local retrofit activity. The ambition was to grow both the demand for retrofit and the local capacity to deliver it, helping areas move from scattered efforts to integrated, place-based strategies and action.

What we did

We supported the co-design phase at the heart of the LARA pilot, facilitating participatory processes in four areas: Hertfordshire, Surrey, the East Midlands and Liverpool City Region. In each place, LARA engaged stakeholders from across the local retrofit system: councils, landlords, skills providers, energy organisations, suppliers and community energy groups. Over five months, stakeholders came together in three full-day workshops which we designed and delivered. They also met in working groups over that time. They came to agree on a shared vision and strategic goals as the foundation for bespoke retrofit strategies addressing the unique barriers and opportunities of each area.

The process was rooted in key principles:

• Bottom-up, not top-down: building from local knowledge and priorities rather than imposing national models.

• Systems thinking: framing retrofit as a complex, interdependent challenge rather than a technical fix.

• Collaborative design: focusing on relationships, shared purpose, and collective capacity, not just outputs.

Between 30 and 70 participants joined the process in each area, including strong representation from local authorities, housing associations, energy providers and community groups.

The workshops were designed to support areas to:

• Build a shared understanding of the local retrofit system

• Develop a unifying vision, mission, and set of principles

• Identify strategic goals, actions, and opportunities for collaboration

• Make visible interdependencies, strengthen relationships, and design collaborative governance

Each workshop built on the last, supported by interim working groups to maintain momentum and deepen engagement. The aim was not only to produce a strategy, but to embed a sense of shared ownership, distributed accountability, and local stewardship.

Impact

The LARA pilot generated a series of structural, relational, and transformational shifts:

Structural shifts: Each area co-produced a tailored Local Retrofit Strategy, grounded in its specific assets, needs, and opportunities. These strategies addressed both demand and supply sides of retrofit, and are already influencing collective action. For example, housing associations in Liverpool City Region have begun exploring resource pooling as a direct result of the process.

Relational shifts: LARA helped stakeholders see retrofit not just as a technical or financial issue, but as a shared, adaptive challenge. It also built trust and surfaced interdependencies. Stakeholders left with a stronger sense of mutual understanding and appreciation for cross-sector collaboration.

Transformational shifts: Perhaps most importantly, LARA shifted mindsets. Retrofit was reframed from a compliance-driven activity to a collective mission, one that shapes how we live, work, and govern together. The process fostered a narrative of participatory governance and shared responsibility.

Learning

The co-design phase offered rich insights into what it takes to build strategies for systems change. These included:

• Well-structured, well-facilitated participatory processes are powerful, and too rare.
• Inclusive design creates the conditions for people to engage meaningfully, regardless of starting point.
• Independent, co-owned governance is key to sustaining momentum without centralising power.
• Holding space for complexity, while offering enough clarity to act, is essential for systemic change.

Ultimately, LARA showed that creating the conditions for systems change is as much about how we work together as what we deliver. The project has laid valuable foundations, and raised important questions about how we build a retrofit system that is more integrated, participatory, and rooted in the needs of people and place.

Having Collaborate onboard was key in making the first phase of the LARA pilot a success. Collaborate was an extremely adaptable contractor who went above and beyond the brief. A facilitation dream team who really helped pull good stuff from the process.

Alastair Mumford, The MCS Foundation

Strategy delivery has already started; the act of saying we’re going to do this together has started the process already. Strategy/action plans will give people direction but the collaboration has already begun since the workshops

Pilot area lead