Six Lewisham residents have been trained as citizen scientists to find out what it is really like to live through energy-efficiency upgrades to council homes.
The recruits were asked to investigate the human side of retrofitting, as Lewisham Council presses ahead with a £16m drive to retrofit around 800 of its homes. Their task, the council said, was investigating what it is really like to go through these often-disruptive works.
Retrofit works can include insulation, new windows and doors, ventilation, heating improvements and solar panels. They are meant to make homes warmer, cheaper to run and more comfortable — but they also mean workmen in the home, noise and weeks of disruption. The council wanted to hear, in residents’ own words, how that trade-off actually feels.
Three months of listening
Over three months, the citizen scientists spoke to people who had already experienced retrofitting, as well as council staff, contractors, energy advisors and others delivering the programme. Their research included 44 telephone interviews and eight longer face-to-face interviews with residents in their homes.
The six were not simply handed a questionnaire. Alongside training in ethnographic research methods, they received retrofit training and gained accredited qualifications in fuel poverty. Two of the six were Goldsmiths University students on a civic placement, and the council worked with South East London Community Energy (SELCE) on the training.
The result is a new guide for residents, A Neighbour’s Guide to Navigating Retrofit, which captures the difficult experiences as well as the positive ones. Residents spoke about noise, dust, delays and uncertainty — alongside improvements including warmer rooms, better windows and greater comfort.
The solar panel gap
One finding stood out. Some residents needed clearer information about new technology in their homes. People who had solar panels installed sometimes found it difficult to understand how they worked or how they were benefiting from them — a gap between the technology going in and residents understanding what it was doing for them.
The research has fed directly into the programme’s resident engagement plan, including making the process clearer and helping residents to understand installed technology. That matters because retrofit is only half a job if the people living with it do not know how to use what has been fitted.
What changes for Wave 3
The findings are already shaping how the next phase of the programme, Wave 3, is delivered:
- Contractors are taking part in a training programme covering a review of the previous programme, resident journey mapping and vulnerability training.
- A resident-informed Code of Good Practice is being developed with contractors, setting out shared standards for how works are carried out.
- A revised welcome pack gives residents plain-English information on what to expect, their rights, and a five-step journey through the process.
- Residents’ circumstances, including health conditions and caring responsibilities, are considered from an early stage when works are planned.
The citizen scientists’ guide is being distributed to all Wave 3 residents alongside their welcome pack, so the next households to go through the works will hear from neighbours who have already been through it — not just from the council.
It is an unusual approach: rather than measuring a retrofit programme only in insulation fitted and energy saved, Lewisham has asked the people living through it to judge it. The noise, dust and delays are on the record alongside the warmer rooms — and the next round of works is being planned with both in mind.
Elsewhere in the borough, Burnt Ash Hill in Lewisham was closed after a crash, while five people escaped a flat fire in nearby North Cheam before firefighters arrived.
