Retrofit Coordination · Rutland
England's smallest county is half an hour from our office. Rutland's housing stock is small, old, rural and largely off the gas grid — which makes it exactly the kind of programme that gets overlooked by contractors chasing volume.
Rutland has fewer than twenty thousand dwellings in total. For a contractor geared to volume that is barely worth mobilising for, which is precisely why Rutland programmes can struggle to attract sensible pricing.
We are half an hour away and we work at whatever scale the stock is. A programme of thirty properties gets the same standard as a programme of six hundred.
Rutland's vernacular is the local stone — limestone through much of the county, ironstone in the west — under Collyweston slate or pantile. Almost none of it has a cavity. Solid wall insulation is therefore the highest-value measure available and the one that carries the most risk if specified without a ventilation strategy.
A good deal of this stone construction is also relatively permeable and benefits from being treated as traditional rather than modern — meaning vapour-open insulation systems, not standard impermeable boards.
Oakham, Uppingham and most of the villages sit in conservation areas, and the county has a high density of listed buildings for its size. External wall insulation will rarely be acceptable on a principal elevation. In practice the realistic package is often internal insulation on selected elevations plus roof, floor, draught-proofing, heating controls and better ventilation — a genuine improvement in comfort and running costs that does not damage the building or fail at planning.
That is a smaller intervention than a headline funding target might imply. We would rather tell you that at scoping stage than design a programme that cannot be consented.
Outside the two towns, mains gas is patchy at best. Oil and electric heating dominate, with the running costs that implies. Combined with solid wall construction and an ageing population in many villages, that produces exactly the fuel poverty profile that Warm Homes: Local Grant and ECO4 Flex exist to address.
We have not yet delivered for Rutland County Council. Our comparable work is immediately next door: South Kesteven District Council, our own authority, whose limestone stock around Stamford and Bourne is essentially the same building tradition, and Melton Borough Council on the other side of the county boundary.
PAS 2035 coordination at £549 per property, portfolio EPCs at £75, and air permeability testing at £175 per test. For a county this size we are happy to discuss a whole-stock EPC baseline as a single piece of work.
Before You Ask
One Last Thing
Send us a property list and the funding stream you're targeting. We'll come back with what qualifies, what it costs to coordinate, and the order the measures should go in.