Retrofitting homes to make them more energy efficient can have many different effects. It influences people’s health, household costs, the environment, inequality, and even local regulations. Because all these elements are interconnected, it is helpful to view them as part of a wider system.

A systems map provides a simple visual way of showing how different factors link together and affect one another. It reveals knock‑on effects, feedback loops, and unexpected consequences, and is increasingly used in public‑sector planning.

However, we do not yet have a clear overall picture of how housing retrofits affect the wider system in practice.

Building on successful work in other areas, such as transport decarbonisation, we use a participatory systems‑mapping approach to work with stakeholders to create systems maps for housing decarbonisation. This helps people see how different parts of the system interact, identify key connections, and design more effective solutions.