Union Technical has been appointed to upgrade 34 flats across three Viewpoint Housing Association sites in Edinburgh, with works intended to make older residents’ homes warmer, better ventilated and less costly to heat.
Thirty four flats for older residents in Edinburgh are to receive insulation, draught proofing, ventilation and heating control upgrades under a retrofit contract awarded to Glasgow based Union Technical. The work will take place across Viewpoint Housing Association sites at Cluny Gardens, Oswald Road and Charterhall Road. Union Technical will deliver the improvements in partnership with Changeworks, the environmental charity, which will support management and evaluation of the project. The works are expected to take around three months to complete.
The project is small in number, but important in purpose. Scotland’s housing retrofit challenge is not only about new technology or national targets. It is also about older residents living in existing homes that can be expensive to heat, difficult to ventilate properly and costly to maintain. This contract places that challenge inside 34 real flats, where the test will be whether practical upgrades improve comfort without creating new problems for the people who live there.
Union Technical’s work will include loft, cavity wall and garage insulation, external render repairs, draught proofing, improved ventilation, full window overhauls and smart heating controls. The contract is the company’s first for Viewpoint and was awarded through the National Retrofit and Decarbonisation Framework, a procurement route intended to support energy efficiency and decarbonisation work in homes across Scotland.
Viewpoint is not an ordinary housing association. Founded in 1947, it began in response to the post war housing shortage, when women had few housing rights and needed safe accommodation. Its own history traces the organisation to Miss Jane Cunningham, who bought a flat in Rutland Square and let part of her apartment to homeless women before a committee was formed to manage a growing number of properties.
That origin matters because the current retrofit works are not only about energy performance. They are part of the same longer question Viewpoint was created to answer: how people, particularly those with fewer housing options, are able to live safely and independently. Viewpoint now manages around 1,400 properties across Edinburgh, East Lothian, Fife and Midlothian, offering housing and care services for older people.
The Edinburgh project will focus on making homes warmer and more controllable. Smart thermostats are expected to give residents greater control over heating use, while ventilation improvements are intended to support air quality without losing warmth. That balance is important in older and less efficient housing, where sealing draughts without adequate ventilation can create damp and condensation risks.
Owen Coyle, director and co founder of Union Technical, said the improvements would make a lasting difference to residents and help them remain in their local communities. He said the ability to keep living in familiar areas was often overlooked as part of wellbeing.
Simon Haile, Viewpoint’s director of assets, said the programme at Cluny Gardens, Oswald Road and Charterhall Road would help keep homes warmer, improve air quality and give residents greater control over energy use at a time when household costs remain a concern. He described the work as part of Viewpoint’s commitment to sustainability, quality and care.
The project also points to a broader issue for Scottish housing providers. Retrofitting existing homes is usually more difficult than designing efficient homes from the start. Work has to be carried out around residents, existing building fabric, budgets, maintenance pressures and the limits of older properties. Research on housing retrofit has noted that occupied properties create particular practical challenges, especially where deeper retrofit is required.
That is why the involvement of Changeworks is relevant. The Edinburgh based charity has more than three decades of experience in carbon reduction work with local authorities and housing associations, and it was appointed in 2025 to a new decarbonisation framework supporting public sector energy efficiency work.
The contract does not promise a complete transformation of Viewpoint’s estate. It covers 34 flats at three Edinburgh sites, but the project is still worth noting because it deals with the practical end of Scotland’s housing challenge. A warmer home is not an abstract climate measure for an older resident. It can affect health, comfort, independence and the ability to remain in a familiar community.
The works are expected to begin this spring and take around three months.
