Inefficient building envelopes are huge carbon emitters. Retrofitting promises results but the time left to attain climate targets is narrowing. This calls for urgent, scaled-up action. With an abundance of social housing, city authorities can make significant inroads. Edinburgh is one such city that has given it a go. It’s a case study in how brave decision-making, substantial investment, and committed policy are necessary for change but also how, if not handled sensitively, initiatives intended to benefit citizens can prove unpopular. There’s a lot to learn from both sides of the story.
As a homeowner, it’s a challenge to know how to begin retrofitting.
“I have recently joined an organisation called Edinburgh Tool Library,” Mel Esquerre tells us. “It’s starting a Retrofixers programme.”
That’s a big help to someone like Mel, who owns the flat she lives in – one of four in a building dating back to 1919. Due to its age, the property “has no insulation whatsoever, it’s just concrete,” she tells us, which makes it cold and susceptible to ventilation issues.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever spent any winters in Edinburgh, but it is incredibly cold and damp, and so I’ve joined this programme to try to help a little bit.”
Over a series of workshops, Retrofixers teaches residents in the Scottish capital how to improve the energy performance of their home “with very easy measures” and little expense, even those with little do-it-yourself experience.
“Neighbours help each other with the very basics, like draft excluding,” Mel explains. “So, helping with sealing windows and the bottoms of the door, maybe the letterbox too.”
Retrofitting Matters
Retrofixers is the kind of initiative that could benefit millions of people throughout Europe if it landed in other cities.
To meet climate change mitigation targets, the continent needs to triple its rate of retrofitting and sustain it until 2030 – that includes six million, or 15% of all households. At the new rate, Europe’s building stock could be fully retrofitted after 34 years.
As that comes with a €200 billion price tag, the retrofit wave is slow to emerge, but Edinburgh is a rare example of a city retrofitting proactively on a large scale.
Fuel Poverty & Improving Edinburgh’s Energy Performance
Housing stock in Edinburgh is typical of the UK, which has the least insulated homes in Western Europe; they lose heat three times faster than those across the channel.
The condensation, the mould, the not being able to keep your flat warm, all these issues are happening in this area and elsewhere in the city.
In response, the Scottish government’s Energy Efficiency Standard for Social Housing (EESSH2) makes it an obligation for all social landlords – public and private – to comply with energy efficiency targets by 2032.
So, Edinburgh city council has promised £18 million to retrofit its social housing stock in Lochend. That could overhaul between 1,400 and 3,000 home of low-income residents.
It’s a good place to start. Low-income households struggle most to pay their bills, with many people having to choose between eating and turning on the heating. As the European Commission writes, there were “40 million Europeans unable to afford to heat their homes properly in 2022”.
Worse still, the Institute of Health Equality reports that fuel poverty is responsible for 10% of excess winter deaths in the UK, which clocked in at 23,000 for the 2022/23 season. Cold homes claimed about 21.5% of winter deaths, with vulnerable people – including pensioners, children, and those living with disabilities and pre-existing health conditions – at higher risk.
People are living in fear, in really terrible conditions.
Broadly speaking, energy inefficient homes are a public health emergency, and Edinburgh can be congratulated for its attempts to stamp this out. Although there are losers in the story, too.
A Series of Understandable but Unpopular Decisions
In June 2023, Mel received a letter giving notice that her building is one of many in the Lochend area that would undergo forced repairs – and that she’d be liable for 25% of the costs.
The heavy-handed nature of this was made possible by the Tenements (Scotland) Act 2004, which states that decisions on structural changes are enforceable if approved by the majority in a block. A 2009 amendment extended this to include insulation.
“As private owners, we’ve always been responsible for maintenance and repairs,” Mel explains. “Obviously, if your roof leaks and there’s four of you, each of you pays a quarter of the cost. That’s fair enough. But now they can make owners and landlords pay for things like external insulation. The insulation is to comply EESSH2, a standard that does not apply to privately owned flats. ”
Mel’s home is the only privately owned flat in her building. The other three belong to the council.
Following the UK government’s 1980 Housing Acts of England and Scotland, which handed tenants the right to buy their council house off the local authority, mixed tenure buildings are now common in Edinburgh. Mel knows there to be 624 privately owned former council flats in Lochend alone.
In her building, however, where it still owns three-quarters of the residences, the city council calls the shots. It alone can win the vote to retrofit.
The True Cost of Power
Mel’s neighbours have been quoted anywhere between £19,000 and £33,000. This includes a project management fee, which the council has added on top of the works and significantly negates the efficacy of government grants designed to make retrofit affordable. Like many others, Mel isn’t sure how she’ll pay for the work.
“It’s really funny! In all the letters and, I kid you not, if you go on Edinburgh Council website, the first bullet point is: use your savings. This is the official guidance from the council.”
For others it could be even worse: each building must undergo an evaluation to determine the work needed – a sensible measure – but there are no legal price caps and fully coordinated, professional deep retrofits have been known to come in at £50,000 per household. Even more worrying, Scotland’s Just Transition Commission has said that the official cost of decarbonising the country’s built environment could have been underestimated by as much as 75%!
“Nobody is against the actual work happening,” Mel is quick to point out. Quite the opposite. She’d love to live in a place that’s cheaper to heat and still warmer. “We welcome all this work, just not the way it’s being proposed.”
A City Taking Action
It’s a canny move on behalf of Edinburgh council, though. The city’s investment in retrofits falls way short of overhauling the total 20,000 social homes it currently owns. By forcing private owners and landlords to get in on the act, it nudges closer to climate targets at no extra cost to the authorities.
This is a legitimate move formalised by the Mixed Tenure Improvement Service (MTIS).
It’s completely legal, but the way the council is going about this raises many, many concerns.
Municipal decision-makers aren’t making many friends this way, but geographically it does make sense: Mel explains that the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation identifies Lochend as a “very poor working class part of Edinburgh”, characterised by high levels of fuel poverty.
The City’s Financial Lifeline
Regardless of the justification, residents are finding the overhanging sense of uncertainty highly stressful, Mel says.
“One of my neighbours is elderly and a carer. Another neighbour works several jobs to make ends meet. Another knows they would not pass a credit check. We will all get some grant money from the Scottish Government, some will also get a top up. But this is not going to cover the full cost.”
She’s talking about the devolved government’s Area-Based Schemes: “Edinburgh Council has identified my postcode as an area that can apply.” Mel tells us that it offers a grant of £11,000 with a another £5,000 for specific qualifying conditions, although these are vague as the local authority applies on residents’ behalf. Generally speaking, the top-up is available to people with children and pre-existing health conditions, or those in receipt of state benefits.
It’s proof that the City of Edinburgh isn’t oblivious to residents’ concerns. They’ve also formed a payment plan whereby private homeowners could borrow from the council, but this forces people further into debt.
“On top of the bill for the actual work, I have to pay 20 per cent to the council for just managing the scheme, and then 4 per cent if I wanted to agree a payment plan.”
The Many Faces of Forced Retrofitting
For all the official channels of support, many property owners are unable or unwilling to pay. If they are a majority in a block, remember, they can vote the changes down.
It’s certainly the case in Wester Hailes, an area on the other side of the city, where retrofit work is nearing completion.
“You’ll see five lovely new insulated retrofitted buildings and then next to it one that hasn’t been touched. Council tenants that live in those blocks will not benefit from any of the improvements, yet their rent will still go up,” Mel says.
Bear in mind that long waiting lists for social houses can push low-income families into private rented accommodation. Their homes are in jeopardy as landlords in the minority are forced to renovate and instead choose to sell up.
“This was highlighted by a story in the news where a landlord with two flats had an estimate for 150,000 pounds,” Mel recalls. “Of course they’re going to sell the flats!”
Mel adds that 73 private owners in Wester Hailes and Lochend have sold their flats back to the council so far, out of the 400 affected.
Social Implications
Suddenly eviction was on the cards, with wider implications for a mother who lived in one of the flats with her two daughters.
“One of them has got additional needs and she’s had to fight really hard to get those needs met by the school.” If forced to move to a new catchment area, Mel explains, that lengthy process starts again. “To have to take those kids away from that environment where they’re safe, that’s horrendous.”
Evictions can occur because flats are easier to sell empty, or because the council is under pressure to house social tenants instead.
In Wester Hailes, 38 families already lost their tenancies as a direct result of MTIS, as reported in the October 2024 housing committee meeting.
“In my case, the council would want to buy my property back because I’m the only one in this block that’s privately owned, and they’re interested in owning the whole block.”
It’s difficult to know whether the Council’s offer is a reasonable one; their appointed surveyors and private estate agents value properties differently.
This creates a lot of uncertainty, Mel tells us. “It’s difficult to know what to do. I don’t want to sell my home but I am exhausted. This has been going on for 18 months and I don’t even have a construction start date yet.”
It’s an unsettling predicament shared by many owner-occupiers. “People are being forced to make these huge decisions because of the high uncertainty about how much debt we will end up in! This is uncertainty by design.”
Living Rent
That’s why Mel joined Living Rent, a community union using collective power to lobby for change.
“The name might be a little bit misleading,” Mel acknowledges, as it doesn’t only support renting tenants. “It works with owners as well. It works with anybody who wants to improve the community.”
The union runs a number of campaigns: nudging Edinburgh city council to house people from its waiting list in long-term empty properties; levying a tourist tax to invest in the needs of local people; and capping rents at affordable rates, for a start.
Living Rent also supports the residents of Edinburgh affected by the handling of the retrofit programme.
For Mel, the comradery is some comfort: “It has been the best vehicle for me to find others in the same situation who I wouldn’t necessarily have met and understand how this is impacting people in lots of different situations.”
It has also brought about a sense of stability, by forcing the council to provide new information through raising freedom-of-information requests.
Fulfilling these requests adds extra work for council workers, Mel acknowledges: “It’s someone’s time to print it, to post it. It’s someone’s time to find the information, to answer every call.” But it’s firm action for residents who feel that they have few options and crave transparency.
“There’s been no consultation with the people, the actual residents who live here. We’re being talked to about the things that are going to happen to us, but there hasn’t been any bringing of residents in on decision making or to the centre of this process.”
Sunshine Over Lochend: Edinburgh Engages
In summer of 2024, the scheme expanded into Magdalene, “another low-income area in the east of the city”, bringing the same anxiety to more households.
To be fair to Edinburgh city council, though, it isn’t a faceless entity bulldozing people’s homes. There are efforts to engage. But the caseworkers assigned to answer residents’ questions “seem to be reading from a script a lot of the time”, Mel observes.
To some extent I feel like maybe they don’t have the resources. Maybe they’ve been given an impossible task.
Programme managers are more informed and host occasional face-to-face drop-ins to ease tensions. But, unlike the open-door policy that has worked in Dunleer, Ireland, the Edinburgh model resembles a public meeting.
Mel knows of three held so far. The first was poorly attended because invitations were sent at such short notice. But at least these events prove that figures of influence are listening.
“We want to work with the council,” Mel emphasises. “We absolutely, 100 per cent welcome the work. I have not spoken to anybody who doesn’t want this to go ahead; landlords, tenants, social tenants, owners, council workers, everybody wants it to go ahead, just not how it’s being carried out now.”
What’s in Store for the Rest of Edinburgh
By learning from these experiences, she believes, the process can change for the better, and that it should happen before the retrofit programme is rolled out in any more areas of Edinburgh.
“I find it heartbreaking that somebody’s about to get the letter I got. That is one of the reasons we’re speaking up because, if they’re going to replicate this work, which needs to happen, we don’t want the same mistakes to be made again and again and again.”
Autumn 2024 brought some respite as the Mixed Tenure Improvement Service (MTIS) was “temporarily paused from being extended to other areas as the council itself, or at least the housing committee, has accepted that it is inconsistent with a just transition,” Mel reveals.
Still, something needs to be done. The UK has 12.8 million properties without wall insulation and 7.9 million homes lacking decent loft insulation. Kudos to Edinburgh for attempting to remove itself from that tally. But as the name Living Rent reminds us, residences are not just buildings, they are the places we live in. For retrofitting to work at any scale, programmes must be sensitive to the needs of those who occupy them.