| Sumari: | <p>The shift towards hybrid working-from-home practices is seen by the authors as a great opportunity to introduce a novel financial mechanism, the Retrofit Salary Sacrifice (RSS) scheme that will help increase homeowners’ awareness and uptake of retrofit works to improve their home-office environments. This novel approach is to encourage household-level retrofitting in order to reduce carbon emissions and lower energy costs (Figure 1). It is a tax-efficient incentive for home-owning employees to improve their properties, using the model of successful existing salary sacrifice schemes for the purchase of bicycles and EVs. This approach has a catalytic role for able-to- pay salaried homeowners to directly benefit from more attractive and affordable finance for retrofit projects, the prospect of lower energy bills in the long term, and a more comfortable working environment. Additionally, employers gain an extra benefit to offer their workforce, as well as a route to addressing Scope 1–3 of their direct and indirect carbon emissions.</p>
<p>This report presents results from work exploring the value of an RSS scheme to different stakeholder groups, assessing its feasibility for piloting and/or implementation, and understanding what needs to be in place for a successful RSS trial. Project activities leading to these specific outcomes involved ongoing conversations, online surveys, and a half-day workshop with key individuals from various groups in central and local government, the construction sector/supply chain, banks/lenders, and employers/companies, along with employees/homeowners.</p>
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