UKCW London: 7-9 May 2025 | ExCeL
UKCW Birmingham: 30 Sept-2 Oct 2025 | NEC

UKCW London 2025 Seminar Programme

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Skipton Building Society's Big Retrofit Project: Lessons from a lender

08 May 2025
Housing Action Hub
To reach Net Zero in the UK by 2050, mortgage lenders such as Skipton Building Society, which leads the Skipton Group including Connells, our property group (and the UK’s largest estate agency), can play a vital role in encouraging and enabling at-scale home decarbonisation. This includes making the ins and outs of domestic retrofit more accessible to customers as they grapple with the challenge. To understand the true cost, return, and implications of retrofit, Skipton conducted an extensive retrofit of one of the residential properties owned by the building society, while collaborating with Leeds Beckett University and the University of Leeds. This research measured how the energy efficiency of the property changed following the work, and captured stakeholder experiences of the retrofit process. Skipton worked with wider Skipton Group colleagues and supply chain stakeholders to trial a "with you all the way" service for private homeowners. Energy efficiency measures for the property included loft, ground floor and cavity wall insulation, triple-glazed windows, double-glazed patio doors, solar panels with a battery, an air-source heat pump, and ventilation upgrades. In this presentation, we discuss the reasons behind Skipton’s decision to undertake the project, the process they followed, the challenges they faced and overcame, how the performance of the property improved following the work, the lessons they learned, further questions the research opened up, and what they plan to do now.
Chairperson
Rachael Owens, Director - National Retrofit Hub
Speakers
Annie Heaton, Group Sustainable Homes Senior Lead - Skipton Building Society
Kate Morland, Architect & Research Fellow, Leeds Sustainability Institute - Leeds Beckett University
Felix Thomas, Research Officer Leeds, Sustainability Institute - Leeds Beckett University

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