If you live in, own, or manage a block of flats, you’ve undoubtedly thought about how your building could be better. You may have thought about how upgrades to the building could benefit you: for example, wall insulation could make flats warmer or solar panels on the roof could generate electricity. Nearly half of all London households live in flats, but advice on energy efficiency and environmental upgrades is often focused on people in houses rather than flats.

The purpose of this toolkit is to help landlords, leaseholders, managers, and retrofit professionals to make blocks better, cheaper to run, and greener. The toolkit highlights upgrades to the building that will deliver energy and carbon savings. 

Making homes more energy-efficient will save money on household energy bills. It will cut carbon emissions: currently a third of all London’s carbon emissions come from homes. Upgrading blocks of flats can create a significant positive environmental impact.

This toolkit has been produced by the Greater London Authority in partnership with Future Climate and Repowering London. Future Climate is a not-for-profit organisation working on policy and innovative delivery programmes to bring about sustained action on climate change. Repowering London is a not-for-profit community energy development organisation that co-creates renewable energy projects that are led and owned by Londoners and put people at the heart of the energy system.

Who is this toolkit for?

This toolkit provides a guide to what is known as the “retrofit process”  – the process of making building upgrades that increase the energy efficiency of buildings and cut carbon emissions and energy costs. 

This toolkit is primarily intended to help stakeholders (landlords, leaseholders, building managers, and retrofit professionals) in blocks of flats, to understand the process and issues involved in improving, refurbishing, or retrofitting blocks of flats to make environmental improvements that save energy and/or carbon emissions.

The detailed information in the toolkit will be primarily useful for blocks in the private sector, as rules and processes about management, as well as the retrofit process, can be different for blocks owned by social housing providers. However, general guidance on the opportunity for retrofit will be helpful for stakeholders in social blocks.

If you are a renter in a block of flats, this toolkit will contain useful information for you. As a first step, you will need to get your landlord on board with the idea of the upgrades you want to see.