After many months of lobbying and discussions it’s really encouraging to see that Belfast City Council have endorsed the Belfast Retrofit Delivery Hub.
What is the Belfast Retrofit Delivery Hub?
The hub brings together FMB NI, the Northern Ireland Housing Executive (NIHE), business leaders, key organisations, and the Council to catalyse retrofit activity across the public and private housing sectors in Belfast. FMB NI Director Gavin McGuire will sit on the working group to provide input on behalf of members.
What will the group seek to achieve?
The Hub’s work is informed by the National Retrofit Strategy produced by the Construction Leadership Council, which the FMB is a key member of. The group will meet quarterly, but task and finish groups will meet on a much more regular basis to review progress.
Its goal will be to ensure that eight key interlocking elements of the strategy are advanced together:
a) Leadership and communications
b) Supporting learning and innovation culture focussed on just transition
c) Performance standards
d) Finance and grants
e) Training and accreditation
f) Materials and equipment
g) Creating customer demand
h) Compliance and quality regime
The Hub will have principal duties which include:
- To identify opportunities for retrofit across the city and bring together the partners who can realise those opportunities.
- To identify and endorse the required standards of building performance that retrofit in Belfast needs to achieve.
- To identify ways of supporting the economic activity, skills and jobs that achieving those standards require
- To draw together partners to source and release funding
- To promote a collaborative, solutions approach sharing knowledge across ownership and tenure
- To ensure engagement with stakeholders across the city, and to support and promote complementary initiatives
- To report on progress, initially to the Resilience and Sustainability Board
How will this benefit FMB members?
There will be the opportunity for members to have input and help with research and policy development as we work through the key strategy elements as outlined above. Ultimately the FMB would like to see these actions create pipeline of work that is accessible to our members.
Want to find out more?
We will keep you updated on progress with this group and hope to have a strong input from the expertise from members. For any more information or questions please contact: [email protected].
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