Scotland’s emerging one-stop shops
A retrofit one-stop shop, sometimes called a retrofit agency, is an approach to engaging communities around retrofit delivery. They are designed to support homeowners, tenants, landlords, and other communities, through the process of retrofit, and to overcome many of the potential barriers to upgrading homes through energy efficiency measures. This could include lack of technical knowledge, retrofit project management, and access to qualified trades and funding. In an ideal world, one-stop shops follow a model that is adapted to provide highly localised support, connections, and knowledge. It’s important that one-stop shops are more than just an advice service and are able to facilitate real retrofit delivery.
In Scotland, there is not yet a fully established one-stop shop, but there are several which are starting to emerge. We talk about ‘emerging’ one-stop shops because it is a model which is developing as retrofit begins to move from a niche to mainstream activity. Much of retrofit work is fragmented and can be complex, meaning that various different services have ‘emerged’ from community cooperative works, or spin out services from other more established providers which seek to offer a one-stop shop service to support people through the retrofit process from start to finish.
Two examples of emerging one stop-shops in Scotland are Changework’s EcoCosi and Loco Home Retrofit.
Here we explore who these one-stop shops are, what stage they are at in their journey, and what services they are able to offer, to showcase two of the organisations who are doing something in real terms to support the emerging sector and market response, and support decarbonisation on a broader scale.
Loco Home Retrofit: Community-led climate action for homes in Glasgow
What: A community-owned retrofit co-operative making it easier to upgrade homes for energy efficiency and comfort.
Where: Glasgow and central Scotland.
Who they work with:
Homeowners
Local tradespeople
Building professionals
What they offer:
Whole home retrofit plans – tailored to home, budget and goals
Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) assessments
Energy Clinic & Advice service – impartial support to get started
One-day Retrofit Assessment & Planning – includes a home visit, heat loss calculations and clear upgrade scenarios
How they work:
Supply independent advice
Fabric-first, whole-house approach
Local engagement, community-led delivery
Supporting skills and standards in the local supply chain
Why it matters: Helping households cut energy bills, improve comfort and reduce carbon – one home at a time.
Loco Home Retrofit is a community-owned social enterprise working to simplify the process of upgrading homes for energy efficiency and decarbonisation. Based in Glasgow and serving central Scotland, it brings together homeowners, tradespeople, and building professionals to support practical, local climate action one home at a time.
Founded by Chris Carus and Tom Nockolds, the organisation is emerging as a one-stop shop for home energy upgrades.
“Core to Loco Home’s services is every home has to have a plan,”
Chris explains, “Someone has to come and visit your home and take a holistic view, independent of suppliers trying to sell a product or a service. We’re there to figure out what's appropriate for the building and the household and put it into a sensible sequence.”
With over 200 members, Loco Home Retrofit operates as a multistakeholder co-operative focused on decarbonising Glasgow’s homes while reducing the stress of home maintenance. “We all want a happy and healthy home that doesn't cost the Earth to keep warm,” says Chris. “But sometimes it is hard to know where to start and what to do.”
A key part of the organisation’s mission is to build trust in retrofit and increase uptake by offering impartial advice and practical solutions. The team is also tackling major sector challenges, such as the shortage of qualified installers. “While we’re still lacking a clear signal from Scottish Government which would incentivise the development of a retrofit sector,” says Chris, “Loco Home Retrofit is part of a long tradition of civic organisations coming together to provide leadership where it's missing. We're helping local tradespeople to raise their standards.”
Innovation is also a hallmark of Loco Home Retrofit’s approach. It has contributed to two UK Government Green Homes Finance Accelerator projects - one focused on creating a national platform for private retrofit finance with Parity Projects, and another with People Powered Retrofit to develop non-profit cooperative finance through credit unions.
The organisation’s commitment to community is evident not only in its co-operative structure, but also in how it engages households. “We’ve been experimenting with new forms of engagement with households and with communities, whether that's communities of interest or communities of place. And those communities of place can mean the owners of a tenement or the people in the street.”
Winner of the Gamechanger Award at the 2023 Accelerate to Zero Awards, Loco Home Retrofit is proving that a community-first, locally grounded model of retrofit can deliver real impact and is ready to scale. From dozens of whole home plans today to ambitions of reaching thousands, it stands as a model for how local action can lead the way on the journey to net zero.
EcoCosi: Making home retrofit simpler
What: A comprehensive, end-to-end home retrofit service from Changeworks that supports homeowners and landlords to improve energy efficiency, cut carbon, and create warmer, cosier homes without the hassle.
Where: Currently Edinburgh, the Lothians, and the Scottish Borders with expansion across Scotland planned.
Who they work with:
Homeowners
Community groups
Landlords
Local, trusted installers and contractors
What they offer:
myEcoCosi – a free online tool to start your retrofit journey; providing summarised retrofit recommendations, cost estimates and energy savings
Expert home retrofit support via EcoCosi, including tailored whole-home survey and renovation plans
Connection to trusted contractors
Project facilitation and quality assurance from start to finish
How they work:
Step-by-step guidance through the full retrofit process
Advice that’s independent, expert, and tailored
Signposting to finance options and support with contractor coordination
Focus on smooth delivery, quality control, and post-install care
Why it matters: Helping homeowners to cut energy bills, reduce emissions, and enjoy more comfortable homes.
EcoCosi is a comprehensive home retrofit service from Changeworks, designed to take the hassle out of decarbonising homes. It takes a whole-house, step-by-step approach to retrofit. The service aims to streamline what can often be a daunting process of juggling advice, multiple contractors, finance, and technical decisions by acting as a one-stop shop for everything from planning to post-installation support.
At the start of the EcoCosi journey is myEcoCosi, a free online tool that helps householders get started. By answering a few simple questions, users receive a home improvement summary, with estimated costs, energy savings, and upgrade suggestions specific to their home. This marks the first step in a fully supported, end-to-end retrofit service.
EcoCosi is delivered in three clear phases through flexible and personalised plans. The first involves a detailed survey of the home, producing a bespoke renovation plan with cost and savings estimates. The second connects homeowners with a trusted network of local installers, providing guidance and bespoke contracts. The final phase involves project facilitation, quality assurance, and post-installation support to ensure everything runs smoothly.
For homeowners living in Central and Southern Scotland, EcoCosi’s complementary service, the Green Energy Helpline, offers free advice and guidance on low-carbon, sustainable measures in and out of the home.
One customer has seen projected annual savings of £1,433 in energy costs and 3,640kg in CO2e through a retrofit project with EcoCosi.
“We know many homeowners want to future-proof and upgrade their home through retrofit, but they don’t know where to start. It can feel overwhelming – and this is where EcoCosi comes in. We work collaboratively with our customers, providing expert, trusted support throughout each stage of the process. Retrofitting is not just about improving energy efficiency; it’s also about creating a home that’s affordably warm, cosy and healthier to live in,” - Marc Brammer, Senior Retrofit Coordinator.
Alongside individual retrofit journeys, Changeworks is currently looking at ways to support locally led and area-based approaches at community level via a 'one-stop shop' holistic domestic retrofit and energy advice service. The one-stop shop service is designed to provide a streamlined and efficient customer journey. This includes expert advice to better manage home energy use, exploring options on retrofit and sustainable technologies, and providing support to access finance, connecting householders with local, trusted contractors, and facilitating project delivery.
Changeworks’s aim is not just to deliver a service, but to build a trusted model for retrofit in Scotland that supports people at every stage of their journey and helps accelerate the country’s transition to net zero.
Developing one-stop shop services is a huge opportunity for Scotland. They offer a growth area for SMEs to deliver retrofit projects across the built environment. One-stop shops develop the supply chain needed to deliver retrofit at scale by connecting customers with businesses and funding. They are also widely considered as an essential 'service infrastructure' to mobilise retrofit. And the data and knowledge they could uncover and aggregate could be key to advancing research into retrofit.
For this to happen, we need to make sure we develop a national network of one-stop shops which facilitate action and are not just an advice service. Several organisations, including the Existing Homes Alliance, are championing the one-stop shop approach and working to inform Government of its importance in supporting the ambition of the Heat in Buildings Bill. We also need to see development and industrialisation in retrofit delivery if we are to meet our goal to decarbonise the built environment and start to deliver investment at scale.
BE-ST wants to help companies diversify and upskill to deliver retrofit programmes at scale and encourage investment into this space. One of Retrofit Scotland’s focus areas will create a digital platform and knowledge hub that will provide valuable information to one-stop shops as they emerge.
We want to ensure that all aspects of the sector are supported to ensure customers (both private individuals and organisations) can access high quality professionals who can support retrofit works. One way we can support this is through Retrofit Scotland which aims to create a central hub of one-stop shop services for a national response to retrofit so that all aspects of retrofit activity are linked and able to share learning and successes easily across the sector.