• This report considers the nature of residential and domestic retrofit work – the skills, tools and tasks of the jobs involved – and provides key data points to design an appropriate industrial strategy.

• It uses an unprecedented dataset (ASPECTT), developed in-house by Autonomy, to map international databases onto ONS occupation codes, to put important detail onto job transition plans.

• This allows us to identify the skills, tasks and tools used in retrofit work, and therefore which workers in adjacent occupations could transition to this crucial line of work.

• In total, there are over 3.8 million workers across the UK that could move into retrofit work relatively quickly.

• The study shows that the North of England is a fertile area for mass retrofit roll outs

• If a large-scale transition is to succeed it will require a UK government-led industrial strategy.

Authors

Autonomy team

Sonia Balagopalan

Phil Jones

This project was supported by the Alex Ferry Foundation and Subak

Will Stronge, Director of Research at Autonomy, said:

“The North of England can lead the Green Revolution.

“Using our new data analytics, we’ve been able to systematically compare skills across the UK’s labour market. Given the supply of the workforce and the concentration of need for retrofitting, Northern areas of England should be prioritised for a major retrofit programme.

“Our report shows the North has the retrofit workforce ready to go, but just needs a Government committed to making it happen.”