June 02, 2025

Retrofit rescue: lessons learned from fixing a disastrous programme of works in Fishwick, with Filipe Amarante and Joanna Curtis (National Energy Action)

1 hour 29 minutes

This episode is all about a retrofit programme gone wrong in Preston and the effort required to fix it.

It's a story that was covered in the pages of Passive House Plus back in 2018 under the headline "Disastrous Preston retrofit scheme remains unresolved" and until recently we thought it remained unresolved.

We're joined by Filipe Amarante and Joanna Curtis to talk about the Preston Retrofit Catastrophe and all the work that National Energy Action has been doing to fix the grotesque damage that was wrought on a community in the 2010s. It's a project that's consumed at least four years and—in truth—will require many more to make good.

It's not a hopeless story though. The work NEA has carried out is full of lessons for anyone who works in retrofit to learn. They've taken a worst case scenario—one so bad it's hard to imagine how you could make it any worse—and developed a remediation programme that mitigates the worst of the situation while laying out a best-practice template for how one should approach place-based retrofit programmes.

They're also hosting a NEA webinar about the programme on 10 June: sign up here.

Notes from the show

The Passive House Plus article: "Disastrous Preston retrofit scheme remains unresolved"
Filipe on LinkedIn
Joanna on LinkedIn
The NEA website
The NEA's summary report on the project (and video): Warm and Safe Homes in Fishwick
More photos of the disaster in "When retrofit goes wrong – lessons from Preston", a presentation by Kate de Selincourt, the writer who brought this story to Jeff's attention
Cathy Come Home on IMDB
A Taste of Honey on IMDB
Riff-Raff on IMDB

**SOME SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**
We don't actually earn anything from this, and it's quite a lot of work, so we have to promote the day jobs.

Follow us on the Zero Ambitions LinkedIn page (we still don't have a proper website)
Jeff and Dan about Zero Ambitions Partners (the consultancy) for help with positioning and communications strategy, customer/user research and engagement strategy, carbon calculations and EPDs – we're up to all sorts
Subscribe and advertise with Passive House Plus (UK edition here too)
Check Lloyd Alter's Substack: Carbon Upfront
Join ACAN
Join the AECB
Join the IGBC
Check out Her Own Space, the renovation and retrofit platform for women

**END OF SELF-PROMOTING CALLS TO ACTION**

...more

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By Jeff and Dan

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