Retrofitting homes for better health

Key information:

• Partner: Repowering London
• Amount: £250,000
• Duration: 2 years
• Programme: Health effects of air pollution

What are we doing together?

Damp, mouldy homes are bad for our health. Too many homes in the UK are poorly insulated, ventilated and maintained. This creates the perfect conditions for damp and mould to thrive, which negatively affects indoor air quality. Living with damp and mould poses serious, and sometimes life-threatening, health risks. It affects airways and lungs, eyes and skin. Living in cold, damp conditions is also linked to poor mental health.

Retrofitting is the process of making modifications to existing buildings to improve their performance or efficiency. We’re funding Repowering London to develop new and effective ways to retrofit the homes of low-income residents to a high standard. High quality retrofit can help to reduce damp and mould at source by addressing defects in the home. And, importantly, through increased insulation and better ventilation, retrofitting also creates warmer, safer homes that deliver additional health and wellbeing benefits.

Lambeth-based Repowering London have been a pioneer of community-owned energy in London for more than a decade. For the last two years, they have applied their expertise and community-led approach to the challenges of retrofitting, testing solutions to deliver healthier, more energy efficient homes.

During our partnership, Repowering London will develop and implement a community retrofit strategy with residents’ health and wellbeing built into the design. This will include:

• Maintaining a retrofit advice and delivery service in Lambeth, including home visits and retrofit assessments and installation.
• Expanding their expertise in retrofitting whole blocks of flats, co-designing solutions with residents.
• Creating a framework for measuring, monitoring and evaluating community-led retrofit interventions.

Repowering London will share what they learn during this two-year period to support the growth of other community-led retrofit initiatives around the country.

Aim of the partnership

We’re funding this work because we want to learn more about how retrofitting homes can improve indoor air quality and people’s health. For example, we want to find out:

• whether there is a sustainable model for community-led retrofit that delivers both health and social impacts.
• how indoor air quality can be built into the retrofit design and implementation process.

We will use this knowledge to inform our indoor air quality strategy and to support our work advocating for health-centred retrofitting.

This partnership will also support a mission-aligned, local organisation to thrive. We want Repowering London to establish themselves as a leader in the community-led retrofit space. Rolling out an innovative, effective model to create healthier, more energy efficient homes will improve indoor air quality and health in Lambeth and other London boroughs.

Connection to our strategy

Our Health effects of air pollution programme finds equitable solutions for poor air quality in cities.

Poor indoor air quality is often a product of substandard housing that is inadequately designed, maintained, ventilated and heated. Evidence suggests households in lower income areas are more likely to live with a worse indoor air environment and that racially minoritised residents are significantly more likely to have damp problems in their homes. 42% of residents who responded to our Health and Wellbeing survey identified themselves as “financially struggling” said they worried about damp and mould “often” or “all the time”.

This is a systemic problem. It persists because people living with damp and mould often lack the resources or power to improve their living conditions. And landlords aren’t effectively incentivised or held accountable for improvements. We need to change this to achieve our vision of a healthier world where everyone breaths clean air.

We’re funding this work because retrofit solutions can deliver multiple health, social and environment benefits, while improving indoor air quality. Retrofitting also helps to improve the quality of our housing stock, address housing injustice and alleviate energy debt, the fastest rising household debt according to research we commissioned.