About INHABIT
An opportunity and challenges
Retrofitting the UK’s homes will require a substantial investment—estimated at £250 billion by 2050. This offers an unprecedented opportunity to enhance environmental and socio-economic outcomes, including public health improvements and reduced inequalities.
However, our current lack of scientific knowledge and tools hampers our ability to fully capitalise on this potential. Specifically, we lack understanding of how retrofitting impacts the indoor environment and health in real-world scenarios and we do not have comprehensive tools to assess both positive and negative health impacts of retrofit options. Furthermore, our insights into the complex interactions among the indoor environment, health, inequalities, behaviours, and regulatory and financial frameworks are limited.
The INHABIT Hub has been specifically established to tackle these complex challenges.
Aims and Objectives
The INHABIT Hub aims to produce scientific evidence and policy-relevant solutions to realise the health co-benefits of the UK’s net zero transition in housing. Our main objectives include:
- Establishing and growing a transdisciplinary hub to become an International Centre of Excellence that pioneers the improvement in indoor environments and health as the housing sector transitions to net zero.
- Developing a systems understanding of retrofits’ impacts, through observations and modelling, focusing on indoor environment, health and inequalities to promote health-centred actions.
- Creating a collaborative learning space to boost stakeholders’ and researchers’ skills in transdisciplinary research and net zero delivery.
- Co-producing example retrofitting projects that integrate net zero considerations with health and address inequality.
Applications and benefits
Co-production with stakeholders is core to our vision, enabling us to deliver policy-relevant knowledge, tools and metrics. That is why we have partnered with a diverse group of stakeholders, including 14 local/regional authorities, 4 housing associations, and 3 businesses, and world-class researchers from 11 organisations. Through workshops and online meetings, we have collaboratively shaped our research priorities.
The hub will leverage our significant investments, such as those from the West Midlands Combined Authority’s “Net Zero Neighbourhood” initiative. These projects will enable real-world studies such as monitoring indoor environments and health in actual retrofit homes and applying co-developed systems understanding and models in actual retrofitting projects.
The insights obtained will enhance the capabilities of local authorities, housing associations, businesses, and other net zero delivery providers to maximise health benefits while meeting urgently-needed net zero targets. Moreover, our work will also yield broader societal benefits, including healthier indoor environments, lower healthcare costs, reduced energy bills, and improved social equity.