**Abstract**

Considering the spontaneous growth in retrofitting practices, existing buildings, particularly those of historical significance are being transformed using a wide range of interventions. However, the pervasiveness of these interventions constitutes a serious challenge to retrofitting heritage buildings. The aim of this paper is to investigate current retrofitting strategies and interventions in heritage buildings. The purpose is to assess current performance through the viewpoint of energy efficiency. The paper adopted pragmatic analytic and comparative approach and methodology to investigating retrofitting interventions in the reuse of England listed churches. A top down approach method of data collection was employed to collect energy use data from monthly utility bills and meter printer outs from selected buildings. Findings show that in terms of energy performance, the majority of the surveyed buildings are currently under-performing. Recommendations for low energy use interventions for operational management of retrofitting projects were proposed. It concluded that the low operational energy use should be a key priority for effectiveness in any proposed retrofitting intervention on heritage building projects.

**Keywords:** heritage buildings, low energy, energy performance, rehabilitation, sustainability
