The Federation of Master Builders (FMB) published a guide for homeowners on creating an energy efficient home on 18 September 20251. The guide sets out a whole house approach to retrofit, and states that the starting point is the fabric of the building rather than individual measures added in isolation1.
The FMB's own summary of the approach is set out at the top of the guide:
"Making your home energy efficient starts with the fabric of your home. Here's how to take a 'whole house' approach to a warmer home and lower energy bills with retrofit."
The guide is published under the FMB's homeowner guides to home renovation, in a section aimed at people finding a builder1. It describes retrofit as a route to a warmer home and lower energy bills, and frames the fabric of the home as the first consideration1. No costs, grant amounts, eligibility rules, timescales or named products appear in the published text1. The guide does not set out which specific measures a household should install, in what order beyond starting with the fabric, or how a whole house approach differs in practice from installing measures one at a time; none of this has been reported1.
The FMB is a trade body representing builders, and the guide sits within its consumer-facing renovation content rather than in a scheme or funding announcement1. No accreditation, warranty or quality assurance route for the work is named in the published text1.
Why it matters for households
A whole house approach treats the home as one system, so measures are planned together rather than fitted piecemeal. For a household, that shapes both the order of work and how much disruption each stage causes, because insulation, glazing, ventilation and heating interact. A fabric first approach puts the building envelope ahead of the heating system, which is the sequence the FMB guide describes1. Households weighing where to begin can compare that with the wider question of what to do first to make a home more energy efficient.
Planning work as a single project usually requires a survey and a written plan before any installer is booked. Whole house plans set out what a property needs and in what order, and are typically produced by a retrofit assessor or retrofit coordinator. Households in flats face separate constraints on what can be done to the shared parts of a building, which affects whether a whole house plan is available to flat owners. The cost of taking this route, as opposed to single measures, is a distinct question from the cost of the measures themselves; what a whole house retrofit costs in the UK covers that ground. For households that want the planning done for them, Cosy Homes Oxfordshire is one example of a whole house plan service, and Carbon Co-op is a householder-led model. Smaller, lower-cost steps such as upgrading appliances sit outside the fabric-first sequence the FMB describes1.
What happens next
No next steps, follow-up publications or dated actions are set out in the guide1.