Simon McWhirter, Deputy Chief Executive of the UK Green Building Council, has joined the Board of the National Retrofit Hub.
With Simon having more than 25 years of experience in roles spanning construction, finance, and not-for-profit sectors, the Hub noted that he joins a team of experts with over 100 years of combined experience in influential roles within the retrofit housing sector.
Lynne Sullivan OBE, Chair of the Board, said:
Simon’s active engagement across the industry mirrors the collaborative ethos that defines our mission at the Hub. This appointment comes at a pivotal moment as we are rapidly building progress at the Hub; our working group activity is in full swing with our first outputs due in the Autumn, a new website and branding will soon be unveiled, and the Board and Executive team are collaborating with a growing number of partners and sponsors.
She added that the Board would draw from Simon’s experience within a range of groups, such as the Scottish Government’s Green Heat Finance Task Force and the UK government’s Energy Efficiency Task Force, to help the Hub ensure that its consider the conditions needed to scale retrofit from many different local contexts. She said:
This appointment will also help us make stronger connections with the work of the UKGBC, where Simon plays a leading role. We look forward to sharing where we have got to so far with Simon and gaining his advice and guidance on the routes forward.
Simon added:
The National Retrofit Hub will fill a longstanding missing piece of the puzzle of solving our national housing retrofit crisis. I’m excited to lend my experience to the shared mission of upgrading the UK’s housing stock to prepare for a net zero future.
He noted that in the face of a deepening climate emergency, the Hub’s work is critical to the net zero mission.
We know that there is no single policy or industry lever that we can pull to achieve retrofit at the speed and scale needed, which makes collaboration our only pathway to nationwide retrofit – both top-down led by governments and bottom-up on the groundwork by learning from industry’s best practice on the ground. With both UKGBC and the National Retrofit Hub ideally placed to enable that collaboration, I look forward to an even closer partnership that can accelerate our shared goals.
