Regenerative Places

Our programme aims to co-create place-based retrofit strategies that enhance local network capacity, develop resilience against future climate-related challenges, and deliver broad “regenerative” benefits to communities.

We use the term “Regenerative” as a North star, or a guiding principle to steer our work and set out the level of ambition necessary. We emphasise that current projects may not immediately demonstrate regenerative traits, rather, inspired by the Three-horizons Framework, UKGBC envisage our Regenerative Places Programme as a way to set out our “Horizon 3” – a shared vision of an emerging future that has positive, regenerative impacts on people, planet, and place.

Current projects are intended to support and inspire local stakeholders, so as to nurture and restore networks from the ground up, and activate positive change (Horizon 2).

Our homes and the need for retrofit in the UK

UKGBC’s  Net Zero Whole Life Carbon Roadmap shows that homes are responsible for the largest share of emissions from the built environment. Tackling these emissions is mission-critical to delivering on the UK’s net zero commitment. 

With just under two-thirds of the nation’s homes rated an EPC rating ‘D’ or below, we have a housing stock that is wasting precious energy on a daily basis. It is our strong belief that retrofit at scale can only be delivered through a joined up ‘top down/bottom up’ approach and by working with local communities. We need national government to provide the strategy and vision, and the funding for those households that need support, and we need local actors and communities to facilitate delivery.

We also need to be holistic. Retrofit is a complex system and a failure to take holistic approaches can result in poorly executed interventions. We’re working closely with the MCS Foundation on the Local Area Retrofit Accelerator, this will fund and support a place-based process whereby communities and local stakeholders are invited to co-create local retrofit strategies.

Through our Regenerative Places Programme, we are also keen to explore wider benefits for the communities that we work with and how these can be unlocked through a locally led home retrofit programme. We firmly believe that major change can happen if we help support and unleash the potential of local people to improve their own homes and neighbourhoods.