Britain’s decrepit homes cause three big problems.

Retrofitting housing would help renters’ rights and finances and accelerate energy transition – it’s time politicians embraced it

In my last rental home, there was a mysterious hole in the external wall of our living room. It was the size of a 50p coin, and you could see right through it to the pub opposite our house. No one knew how it got there, but it had its uses: I learned to gauge the outside temperature by holding my hand up to it. The hole soon symbolised the litany of problems our private landlord never cared to deal with, as well as our eye-watering energy bills. On cold mornings, I wondered if the seats in the Range Rover he drove were heated.

Policies for housing, renting and green renewal are interconnected. On average, heating homes that are drafty adds hundreds of pounds a year to people’s bills. It also causes tonnes of environmental pollution: in 2021, warming the UK’s 28m homes accounted for almost 20% of all its greenhouse gas emissions. Considering that 80% of buildings standing in 2050 have already been built and we have some of the oldest and leakiest housing stock in western Europe, these homes must be retrofitted and insulated.