Insulate Our Homes

Isabelle: Hello and welcome to the Carbon Copy Podcast with me Isabelle Sparrow  

Bradley: And me Bradley Ingham 

Isabelle: And in this series, Do something Bigger we’re looking at ways to have more impact, to make more of a difference, basically to create the biggest change possible in the place where you live. We will be covering a different action relating to climate or nature, and well, sometimes both, each week. So if you’ve started with an episode you’re not so interested in, don’t give up on us just yet, as next week may be more up your street.  

Carbon Copy is a charity inspiring, more big thinking local action for climate and nature. Over the course of this year, we’re highlighting 25 big local actions on this podcast. So subscribe now to hear the next episodes as soon as they land. 

Bradley: So today we’re going to be talking all about insulating our homes. Izzy, did you know that 23% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions actually come from buildings? Most of that is coming from how we heat our homes. 

Isabelle: Crikey, that’s a lot. That’s like nearly a quarter. 

Bradley: Also, the UK has some of the oldest and least energy efficient housing stock in all of Europe, with many homes built before our modern insulation standards. This means that 25% of heat is lost through the roof and 35% through the walls in uninsulated homes. 

Isabelle: So that’s a lot of heat that just doesn’t stay where it’s supposed to be. It is a pretty significant issue. How do we go about doing something about this and what kind of impact could it have if we did solve this problem? 

Bradley: Okay, good question. So obviously, we know that the UK has a net zero target of reaching net zero by 2050. So in order for us to do that, we need to retrofit 27 million homes to a higher efficiency standard and yes, I know the word retrofitting is, you know, it’s something that does get thrown around quite a lot. 

Isabelle: Yeah. Okay. So I’ll explain that one. Retrofitting is the process of upgrading or adding new features to an existing building. So to make it more energy efficient and environmentally friendly. So that could be insulation, upgrading windows or adding better kind of sealing around the outside of doors or the other openings in the property to prevent drafts and also installing energy efficient heating systems so that things like ground source heating or air source heat pumps, things that are not using fossil fuels, ideally. 

Bradley: That’s the one. So, you know, in a nutshell it’s about improving older buildings to reduce energy use. And also we can cut carbon emissions without having to tear the buildings down and start again from scratch. 

Isabelle: So 27 million homes, that’s insane. That’s a huge number of houses and probably quite hard for most people to get their heads round. So let’s talk about retrofitting on a kind of more individual household basis. If people do this to their homes, what kind of impact could it have? 

Bradley: If we base it our on 2023 figures for gas heated homes, insulating lofts can save households around £355 a year on energy bills and solid wall insulation can save up to £520 per year for larger homes, although it has higher upfront costs 

Isabelle: So we’re talking about saving quite a lot of money for each house where this is done and I guess the kind of cumulative effect of that, if it was done across the whole country, would be enormous from a carbon emissions point of view as well. So this big action that we’re talking about, it can be really pretty big. 

But as we all know, energy prices are getting higher, houses are facing fuel poverty and as you mentioned, some of these insulation installations sound like it could be pretty expensive. So what are we doing here in the UK about the people that can’t afford this stuff? 

Bradley: I’m glad that you mention the whole fuel poverty thing because it is the thing that is in the news cycle at the moment. But luckily we’ve got our first guest where this fits in quite nicely. So we’ve been chatting to Andrea from Cosy Homes in Lancashire. This is a countywide energy efficiency and affordable warmth initiative developed by 14 local authorities in Lancashire, now that sounds pretty big!  

Andrea: What we were seeing was that a lot of installers had access to funding and they were leaving out the most vulnerable residents. So you know, some of the very difficult properties to insulate or heat that were occupied by very vulnerable people were getting missed out because a lot of installers want to kind of maximise profit, and some difficult jobs, were kind of left. 

So as a group of local authorities, we thought that was really unfair, that there needed to be something somewhere for those people to come to where they had a reliable place to go, as in the local authority, and we could help them get the work done and provide funding for them. So we set out really to make sure that the most deprived properties, the most vulnerable residents, those with long term health conditions, etc., had an easy way to access funding to make sure that homes were warm and that they remained well in their properties. Because we all know living in a cold home can really impact on people’s health and wellbeing. 

Isabelle: So obviously it’s really brilliant that Cosy Homes is kind of focused around those more vulnerable people, the people who are likely to suffer the most when they can’t heat their homes or keep their homes warm. But it’s actually only focused on people who own their properties, which I’m guessing misses out quite a big chunk of vulnerable people or people who are on low incomes. There’s lots of people who are living in really cold homes who rent. So what are they doing or what can be done to improve properties that are owned by landlords? 

Bradley: It’s a very good point that you make about the whole rental sector. We spoke to Andrea about this, and obviously at the moment, landlords, if they want to insulate the properties, they have to basically pay for that themselves. However, things are going to be changing. So in April, a landlord can pick one of their properties and they can get it insulated for free. And then if they have any other properties, they can pay a small contribution towards it, and then they can also get the rest of that done. So let’s hear Andrea tell us a little bit more about that. 

Andrea: Landlords can access all of our funding. There is a contribution, but from April on the new grant, any landlords can have one property fully funded. So if they’ve got a property that you know, maybe has got an energy rating of an F or a G and maybe they’re struggling to rent it, we can help do all the energy efficiency measures on that one property and then any subsequent properties they will pay a contribution. I think that’s a big step forward for, for landlords because we realise a lot of the poorer properties are private rented. There’s not a lot of take up from landlords purely because this contribution and a lot of landlords are, you know, they just have one or two properties so they don’t have portfolios. So we do recognise that landlords struggle and obviously the government’s realised that. So, you know, it’s a good offer. I’d encourage everyone, all landlords out there to kind of put in their first property, their first property and get a fully funded property through the scheme. 

Bradley: I think it’s really great that they’re really thinking about the property sector as a whole, so we’re not really leaving anyone out. So it’s good that they’re there, including people in the rental sector and I think for the landlords and also the people that own their properties this is a really, really great scheme. Our next guest Til, is from an organisation where insulating and retrofitting properties is about more than just warm energy efficient homes can be. Canopy Housing is a Leeds based co-operative fighting homelessness, teaching DIY and construction skills and tackling carbon emissions from buildings to boot. 

Til: The organisation started in, we think about 1997 – it became a registered company in 1999 but there were some people doing a bit of work before that – by two people called Mark and Juliet. And they noticed that there were lots of houses around Burley, which is where our office is based now, that were boarded up and there was a lot of anti-social behavior around these derelict houses and there’s also a lot of homelessness. 

So they started with permission from the council just going into these empty houses and renovating them to the livable standard and housing people who are homeless in the local area, in their renovated houses. So that carried on kind of ticking over until about 2019. So a lot of the staff still kind of experimenting with different insulation types and making really airtight properties, kind of just self-taught. 

And then in about 2019, we started going forward with it being a standard policy to retrofit the houses with wood fibre and lime. And we now have about I think it’s about 83 properties that tenanted we operate on, on a self-help scheme as well. So everybody that moves into the houses has done some self-help in their own house. So they come in at any point regarding their kind of position, they’ll come in at any point during the retrofit, so they might come in and do some insulation, but mostly people come in towards the end when we’re decorating and things because they then choose how they paint in the House and what furniture goes into the house. 

Til: We’re trying to change the system up in lots of different ways. And I think that’s the big thing about Canopy is we’re providing warm, safe, comfortable, nice homes for people to live in where they get support. They’re also trying to do lots of kind of social bridging and also trying to do our bit for the environment within this city. 

Isabelle: I really love the approach of self-help, that Canopy use and Til told us about just there. It’s really lovely to hear how people are supported by Canopy and they’re gaining more than just a lovely, warm energy efficient house but something they have a sense of ownership over, something they can feel proud of because they’ve been involved in making it that way. I’d absolutely love to see this kind of scheme rolled out across the UK, but I reckon it’s probably pretty complicated to start something like this. So I asked Til to tell us a little bit more about the support they receive and how it all kind of started. 

Til: I think the main thing that is what enables us to be brilliant is the volunteers. So we have people who come and volunteer from all walks of life. People come from all sorts of different reasons. They’ll come if they can’t be in school for any reason. There’s like an alternative education provision. They’ll come if they’re retired and they want to give something back. 

Til: They’ll come if they’re socially isolated, and they want to just come and make cups of tea on site and chat to people and get to know new people. They come if they want to learn English. There’s some people that are sent by probation when they come out of prison. It’s all sorts of different people that come on site and they show up relentlessly day in, day out whatever we’re doing. We did a massive project last year that was a renovation of it was turning a massive office into three flats and we had so much insulation to do and people came in every week and still showed up and still brought the good vibes and good energy, which is a massive thing. 

And we’re also supported by Leeds City Council, the houses that were sold off under Right to buy. If we buy those from private landlords now Leeds Council will give us two thirds of the initial renovation costs. So that includes all the materials but also staff time because we’re then returning it to social housing stock. So that that’s on the condition after 99 years from the date of purchase, that house will go back to Leeds City Council, which is a really big deal. And yeah, we couldn’t be doing what we’re doing right now with the levels of retrofit that we through now without the support of Leeds City Council, but we’re also we’re also getting money from West Yorkshire Combined Authority and NPower. So there’s lots of local authorities but also big businesses who are realising that people are in cold homes and there’s a housing crisis and that this work needs to be done. 

Bradley: I think this is a really good example of climate action that is really big. It’s not just about the climate action itself, but it’s also a really good example of community action and building community cohesion. And it’s very much about collaboration, which is also central to the success of Cosy Homes in Lancashire. Andrea from Cosy Homes emphasises how their achievements are rooted in the willingness of local authorities to partner, share knowledge and take joint responsibility. Let’s hear what she had to say about this. 

Andrea: I think anyone looking in seeing 14 very diverse local authorities working together, you know, they’ve all got different political views, etc and some of them are rural, some are small, some are big, some are very urban. So we’re very diverse county, I think just 14 authorities who are all working together to try and bring as much funding in as possible, I think that’s the success story and I’m not aware of it happens in many other counties. For the last probably nearly 20 years as a group of authorities, we meet regularly at the moment, we meet every two weeks. So you’ve got a group of council officers who meet every two weeks to look at how schemes are progressing, what we need to do together to market the schemes better. And it just really works because everyone is so engaged from chief exec downwards to all the energy officers actually working on the scheme and third sector organisations who are kind of joining us in helping is to promote energy efficiency awareness. 

Isabelle: I think that it’s hard possibly for people listening to kind of comprehend the amount of red tape that it would take to get that number of people from different councils in a room together. And we’re not at all suggesting that people are going to enact these kinds of levels of projects in their own places where they live. But I think there’s definitely something that can be learned from this sort of willingness to partner up and this willingness to collaborate with maybe people that have a very different way of looking at things over a very different viewpoint and coming from a very different place. 

Isabelle: So there’s definitely some really interesting learnings from that project. At the moment both of  these organisations are working in really specific regions, in Canopy Housings case they’re also working with very specific property types. So they’re working only with back-to-back houses, which is something that is really dying out as a property type. And there’s a there’s only a few places where it’s left, mostly in the North of England, but we know that there’s a need for retrofitting on loads of different kinds of houses across the UK. So we asked Til to tell us what was next for Canopy and if there are plans to expand what they do further. 

Til: This is a big question because we don’t really have an answer to that because we’re very much set for the long haul. This is a massive deal in terms of improving housing stock. We have the worst quality housing stock in all of Europe, and there isn’t that wide scale retrofit happening from like a top-down approach like that’s happening in the rest of Europe. A lot of the government initiatives retrofitting homes have largely failed and people who are doing the work, you don’t have to really have much training or much awareness of what the issues are in the building to come in and do a kind of one size fits all approach to retrofit under the government schemes. And so it’s really falling to the local community to invest in in our housing stock and local people to understand how that how these buildings operate. 

Til: Right now, we’re actually writing a set of guides for people to set up a similar project wherever they are. So it’s four parts, there’s four different guides that come in a set. The first is kind of an overarching, like an overview of how the organisation has become established about the relationship building, about how to run a volunteer programme, about how to do the funding really. The second is a book about how to establish kind of anti-oppression construction sites and initiate system change of the construction industry and how to run the site on a day-to-day basis of the people’s life skills. The third is a guide or like a technical guide for retrofit because it’s very accessible. There’s a lot of information online that’s really not accessible for people who are novices, and the fourth is a guide for tenants, so how to live in these houses because a lot of these systems are putting in houses now that retrofitted systems really change the way that you have to live in a in the house. So for tenants to understand the different way that their property will function, when you move from a non-retrofitted house to a retrofitted house, lots of companies that are selling the materials that we are using and the systems that we’re using that kind of set up for a middle-class consumer in a middle-class household. So we’re trying to work out whether these systems are actually suitable in a social housing context and how we can make them work for tenants. 

Isabelle: Choosing the right systems and materials for tenants is really important to Canopy’s ethos. But in addition, as an environmentally focused organisation, they’re also considering the sustainability of the methods they use. Not all insulation is created equal, some insulation types use plastics and petrochemical based materials and are produced elsewhere in the world, meaning the climate impact of the materials themselves can be significant. Til explained more about the natural locally sourced options that Canopy works with. 

Til: So we kind of teach by experiential learning. We like create a culture of experimentation. We try things out and we see what works. So trying to use materials that are low impact, but also can be reused, can be recycled, but also create an actual healthy living environment. Right now we’re using wood fibre that we’re hoping to experiment with hemp fibre insulation as well, again, because a lot of the hemp is grown in Yorkshire, so wanting to use locally produced materials. 

Til: Unfortunately, the manufacturing of hemp fibre insulation, that happens in the Scottish Borders, the biggest companies in the Scottish Borders. So it’s grown in Yorkshire, sent to the Scottish Borders and then we’ll be getting it back. Whereas sheep’s wool, there’s the huge amount of sheep in Yorkshire and a lot of that wool is really low value, so really people need to be starting to buy more wool products and insulated wool insulation is a fantastic material for insulating houses and that will increase the value of wool. So that’s good for farmers, but it’s also manufactured in Bradford. So there’s a company that does manufacturing in Bradford so we can really localise the products that we’re using, which would be really special. 

Bradley: That’s all that really interesting. Are you a handy person Izzy? 

Isabelle: I’m a pretty handy person. I’m lucky enough to be married to a very handy person. But yeah, I like to try my hand at a bit of DIY, but I know that you know a lot of this stuff, it can feel quite sort of alien quite like off putting for people, you know, I know a few people who their tap starts dripping and they immediately have to ring someone. So this is like really far away from their capabilities. 

Bradley: Yeah, that’s fair. I mean, I think I can like, you know, put up a shelf and fix a leak or whatever. But yeah, I know what you mean. There’s so much information out there, some of it can be very misleading and it is very intimidating when you first get into it. I think this four-part guide that they’re creating I think that’s a really, really good idea, you know, I’m hoping that it will inspire some people to maybe give it a go in their own properties, and I can see what they’re trying to do. They’re basically trying to make a lot more accessible. 

Isabelle: Yeah, that’s absolutely right. And I think it’s not only about it being accessible to do at your own house, but also like potentially to kind of do, you know, on a more kind of community wide basis as well. And don’t forget, obviously, this episode is called Insulate our Homes, but insulation is necessary in all kinds of buildings. So, you know, if you’re somebody who works in a school, if you’re somebody who works in a community hall, if you know, if you have access to these spaces, they all need insulating too, because they all need heating and they need to be efficient. So it’s not just about homes, it’s about kind of all buildings, really. 

Bradley: So what were the key takeaways that we’re going from this episode? Like how can we get something like this to be on a bigger scale? How can people do something bigger around insulation where they live? 

Isabelle: Well, I definitely think it’s worth finding out what your local authority offers currently. There are loads of schemes. Obviously Cosy Homes in Lancashire is in Lancashire specifically, but there are other schemes in other parts of the country that can support you not only with costs of insulation and other kind of energy efficiency measures, but there’s also lots of advice services that can tell you sort of how to improve the energy efficiency of your home. I also think if you work within a business or a public sector organisation and you’re interested in this, it’s really worth getting in touch with other organisations like these two that we’ve spoken to today and ask them for advice and guidance and just kind of find out a bit more about what they did and what hurdles they had to jump through were, because I think a lot of these organisations are really happy to talk to people about what they’ve done and really want to share the knowledge. 

Bradley: Yeah, I think that’s going to be a bit of a theme as we go through the year. It’s that kind of not doing the same job twice, finding that information out from the people that are already doing it. So you’re kind of one step ahead. 

Isabelle: Yeah, absolutely. I also think we should say, because we are the Carbon Copy Podcast, that you should go look on Carbon Copy. And in fact, what you just said about not reinventing the wheel or whatever the phrasing was that you used, that is basically the whole reason for the existence of Carbon Copy. So, you know, we know that a lot of the solutions to issues across the board when it comes to climate change and nature are… they’re already being solved. People are already doing amazing stuff. So Carbon Copy is about really sharing those stories of people that are doing good stuff and can be copied, which is why we’re called Carbon Copy. We have a whole load of information links to organisations that can help and inspiring examples about this topic on the Insulate Our Homes page of our website. 

Isabelle: And this is just one of our 25 Big Local Actions in 2025, and you can explore them all by going to carboncopy.eco that’s e-c-o forward slash take action. 

Bradley: And obviously that link and loads of other useful things are going to be in the show notes. 

Isabelle: Thank you for listening to this episode of Do Something Bigger from the Carbon Copy Podcast. Our guests today have been Andrea Howe and Til Wallis. This episode was written and presented by me Isabelle Sparrow. 

Bradley: and me Bradley Ingham 

Isabelle: Brad also produced and edited the episode. In the next episode, we’ll be talking about peat, with guest speakers from Ulster Wildlife and Lancashire Peat Partnership. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, why not go back and listen to previous series of the Carbon Copy Podcast, and do share with anyone else you think might be interested! Until next time, goodbye!