How wrong is this?

The British Standard for Retrofit assessment for domestic dwellings. Code of practice is now published as BS 40104:2025. It comes into effect on 30 September 2025. 

This is an important document, and we welcome the publication of best practice guidance on Retrofit. Everyone involved in Retrofit should be aware of the contents and guided by them. It clearly states that it is intended for use by competent persons assessing dwellings prior to retrofit, and that has to be a good thing.

The British Standard covers… 

1. context assessment;
2. condition assessment;
3. ventilation assessment;
4. occupancy assessment;
5. energy performance assessment;
6. site-specific context assessment;
7. significance assessment;
8. reporting and lodgement; and
9. competencies

So, what is the problem?

The problem is that it appears every sole trader or individual working in a small to medium sized business (SME) i.e. the people it has been written to get working to a consistently high standard; is going to have to pay £330 to get a copy. 

There is something fundamentally wrong if the standards for Retrofit are hidden behind a paywall, particularly at a cost that is totally unreasonable for the sole traders and SMEs that the whole process is reliant upon following those standards. 

This is clearly not acceptable. The standards our members should work to must be publicly available standards. Our members are enablers for effective Retrofit delivery, and that should not make them a target for boosting BSI profit margins. BSI incidentally being an organisation which boasts of being “without shareholders” and that will apparently “reinvest our profits to achieve the difference we want to see in the world”. 

Our message to BSI is the way to “achieve the difference we want to see in the world” is to let the people who you want to work to your standards see what they are. 

This Retrofit standard has to be made publicly available. Otherwise, it is a barrier to making a positive impact for people and the planet. A barrier being deliberately put in place by an organisation that declares its purpose to reflect its “ambition to make a positive impact for people and the planet”.

Our members, and the other stakeholders they work with, need to know what the standards are in order to follow them. It is entirely unreasonable to expect them to pay (a pretty significant sum of money) to find out what they are.

It is no secret that Retrofit needs to be done right for the good of home owners and occupiers, the economy and ultimately the planet itself. So where is the sense in keeping the ways to do it secret from all but big organisations that can afford to spend £330 on a single document?

This should be a major concern for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) whose policy it is highly detrimental to. We call upon DESNZ to act to ensure the standards are made as widely available as possible, as swiftly as possible, so we can all get on with the task of doing Retrofit properly.


Published 29-09-2025