Earlier this month, the Scottish Green Party’s candidate for Glasgow Patrick Harvie reached out for a visit. Loco Home aims to influence government policy to accelerate the response to climate change so we were happy to share our insights.

Our managing director, Chris, explained the structure of Loco Home – that we’re a co-operative owned by around 300 households – , our services to customers, and our impact. Chris outlined our recent achievements and a number of priorities we would like to see the the next Scottish Parliament address:

1. Support for community energy retrofit projects 

• Such as a CARES programme but for retrofit

2. Enable our service to interact effectively with Home Energy Scotland 

• Eg Our independent reports should be accepted as grant evidence.

3. Better Customer Journey

• Address mould risk: Introduce support and advice for ventilation 
• Level the constraints to heat pumps vs gas boilers.

4. Support for green jobs

• Eg Subsidised PAS2035 Retrofit Assessor and Coordinator training
• More skills support for better heat pump installation performance.

5. Implement Tenement Maintenance Working Group Recommendations ASAP

• The recommendations are for: mandatory reserve funds, 5 yearly condition surveys and owners associations.

6. Commission ‘Action Research’ (learn through doing) to plug knowledge gaps

• Technical solutions for tenements – eg safety of injected insulation over years.
• Intermediated,  area based approaches for decarbonisation.

Priorities for Glasgow

1. Support Glasgow City Council’s Housing Retrofit Position Statement

2. Develop a serious plan to reduce Glasgow’s emissions

Looking Ahead

We were pleased to host a visit from an election candidate and our door is open to others.