The Retrofit Policy Lab brings together Lighthouse researchers, analysts and designers with academics from the University of Leeds, the University of York and the wider N8 Research Partnership.
The big question it's set up to take on is: why has UK retrofit stalled? Billions have been spent on grants and incentives, yet uptake is slowing, outcomes remain uneven, and public trust is fragile.
It started with a piece of award-winning research from Professors Lucie Middlemiss and Mark Davis at the University of Leeds, which made a quietly devastating argument: retrofit policy keeps failing because it assumes people make decisions based on rational financial logic.
Their work made the case that retrofit isn't really a financial decision in the way policy treats it. It's a more layered one, shaped by the relationships households are part of, the meanings they attach to their homes and their money, and the moments in life when change becomes possible.
What that points to is a different kind of policy portfolio: targeted and precise, shaped around motivations, behaviours, relationships and life events rather than a single set of financial levers. The Lab takes that research and runs with it.
Our Playbook keeps the team in a continuous cycle of research, design and experimentation. Our Platform holds everything we learn in one place, getting better and better the more it gets used. Our People - a team of researchers, designers, analysts and academics - are all working the same stubborn problem from different angles.
This is the Lab model working as intended: research, design and experimentation in a continuous cycle, building something that gets more valuable over time, until the evidence is strong enough to act on at scale.
Retrofit policy doesn't fail for lack of ambition. It fails for lack of fit. That's the gap we're looking to help close.