In 2023, Grosvenor partnered with the National Trust, Historic England, Peabody and the Crown Estate, commissioning research to highlight the skills and training challenges that will need to be overcome to ensure that the UK’s historic buildings contribute to a net zero future.

Heritage & Carbon: Addressing the Skills Gap identified a need for 205,000 workers to focus solely on retrofitting historic buildings every year until 2050 to meet the UK’s net zero targets – double the number of workers estimated to have the necessary skills.

Without urgently addressing the need for these extra skills and jobs, the report finds that the UK might face a backlog of retrofit projects in the 2030s. 

The report calls for a long-term national retrofit strategy, led by the Government, bringing together training, funding, and standards to sensitively decarbonise our historic buildings. It also calls for the apprenticeship levy to be made more flexible, allowing unspent funds to be channelled into training more people in the heritage retrofit field.