The Scottish Government has set out ambitious targets to encourage social landlords to retrofit their housing stock. Local authorities in Scotland can set up ‘area-based’ schemes to deliver the necessary retrofits on scale. This is made significantly more complex by heterogeneity in the housing landscape. The legacy of the Right to Buy means all public housing estates are fragmented (to varying degrees) between public, private, or social landlords and homeowners. Large-scale retrofitting plans in these contexts risk exacerbating the divides between tenants and often low-income homeowners. Despite having ambitious and laudable aims, the first stages of the “Mixed-Tenure Improvement Scheme” (MTIS) in Edinburgh has led to the displacement of both tenants and working-class homeowners, lowering enthusiasm for the scheme and creating a significant barrier to its potential for success. This stands to threaten both the urgent need for energy efficiency measures and housing justice.

This project seeks to understand more accurately the key issues that challenge what should be a genuinely ‘just transition’ in Scotland’s social housing, including political blocks, financial issues, and architectural questions. The successful applicant will work closely with Living Rent, Scotland’s tenants’ and community union, who have been actively campaigning in Lochend, Edinburgh, with communities experiencing the first rounds of the MTIS retrofitting scheme. Through community organising and participatory research, the project will work with residents to propose workable solutions.

This PhD scholarship offers an exciting opportunity to bridge the gap between activism, organising, and academic scholarship through a participatory action research project. The student will be expected to support and document the concerns and experiences of people going through this process, with the aim of shaping future Living Rent strategy and informing standards of best practice for other local authorities and housing associations across Scotland. There is an urgent need to retrofit our housing stock at an unprecedented scale and pace: doing so as equitably and fairly as possible is essential to making this transition a just and politically sustainable one. This PhD project sits at the intersection between critical housing studies, urban studies, geography, sustainability, and community activism. It requires a student who is willing to get stuck in with these debates as they unfold on the ground and empower working class tenants and residents to be an active part in shaping the retrofit conversation.