Retrofit Reimagined – Balsall Heath

You may have heard that, with Clifton Road Mosque, Balsall Heath Church Centre, Kamran Shezad and other Balsall Heath residents, Zero Carbon House on Tindal Street have been campaigning for local homes to be retrofitted.  

Our ambition is for ALL the homes in Balsall Heath to be properly insulated and installed with with solar panels etc.

We’d love this to be a genuine community-led project, which will be much more successful than a “top down” approach. 

Two pieces of exciting news:

1. There may now be funding to start our journey with first measures for up to 700 homes. 

2. 13-16 July we’re holding a “Retrofit Reimagined” festival in Balsall Heath and Ladywood to explore 

“What if the climate transition and retrofit of our homes and streets were designed, owned and governed by the people who live there?” 

We are so lucky in here to have a long established “green” culture and very strong support in the local community for ambitious action now.

*Retrofitting means proper insulation to walls, floors, roofs; new windows and doors; ventilation with heat recovery, heat pumps, solar panels etc. The different measures will vary as every house is different. 

Our old leaky homes may be the forgotten Cinderella, haemorrhaging massive amounts of heat. It’s really important these homes and the people who live in them are not left behind.  People’s physical health is badly affected by poor housing with mould, damp, condensation; and their mental health, by worry about massive bills, etc.

Retrofitting old homes properly, carefully and to really high standards, we can make dramatic savings with huge benefits to people’s lives. 

Our homes generate a massive chunk of Balsall Heath’s CO₂, and at the same time push people into fuel poverty.  We’re using so much energy now that, as David Attenborough and others have shown, we’re destroying a liveable planet.  But cutting home energy use (by 80%+) will help those most in need, cut bills, improve people’s health and well-being, create high skilled local jobs, and help the planet at the same time. 

Our ambitious vision is for ALL homes in Balsall Heath to have their energy use drastically reduced. 

Bahu Trust exciting recent resources: https://bahutrust.org/environment/resources