Integrating energy efficiency into private home repair, maintenance and improvement practice in England and Wales

The energy performance of housing is a crucial element in plans for climate change mitigation, future energy supply and addressing energy poverty. The age of the UK housing stock, and its slow rate of replacement, indicate that attention needs to be focussed in particular on improving existing homes, a high proportion of which are private owner occupied. Thus, the improvements necessary to achieve carbon reductions will require both large scale investment and likely lead to significant disruption. The thriving home repair, maintenance and improvement market, delivered largely by small building trades companies and sole traders, offers practical opportunities and a potential route to market for such improvements. Set against the context of high-level strategic targets, this paper draws on qualitative research at the micro level and presents a framework for the changes that will be needed to enable this to happen in practice, as well as insights into current practice and the existing regime in which the industry operates. Through application of a multi-level perspective to this socio-technical challenge, the work identifies the levels at which such changes should occur, and uses the results to develop and identify key weaknesses and solutions to enable change.