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Purpose
With the rising cost of energy, many rural households are struggling to keep their homes warm
in winter. This extra resource provides information about how your community can address
affordable heating and energy efficiency when producing a Community Led Plan.
What’s involved
Understanding the significance of affordable warmth to your community and working with others
to develop actions, access resources and deliver warmer homes in your area.
What is affordable warmth?
Fuel poverty is a Government term to describe
households that spend more than 10% of their income on
heating. With the rising cost of energy, more and more
people struggle to afford heating costs. Living in cold
homes impacts on people’s physical and mental
wellbeing damaging people’s health and affecting their
quality of life. The elderly, children, and those with a
disability or long-term illness are especially vulnerable.
There are three main causes of fuel poverty:
•
•
•
poor energy efficiency in the home
high energy prices
low household income.
It is estimated that there were 5.1 million households in
the UK and 4 million in England in fuel poverty in 2010.
This is about 20% of all English households. High fuel
prices and cold winters are exacerbating the problem. It
is estimated that for every 1% increase in fuel prices
another 40,000 households enter fuel poverty.
Improving the energy efficiency of a home can deliver
affordable warmth to a household. Houses are warmer,
fuel bills are reduced and carbon emissions are lower,
which helps tackle climate change.
Government Definition of
Fuel Poverty
A household is defined as
being in fuel poverty when 10%
or more of household income is
spent to achieve a satisfactory
heating regime (21°C in the
living room and 18°C in the
rest of the house). It is
calculated using the income of
households, the cost of fuel for
heating, and the ability of the
home to retain heat.
Communicating Affordable Warmth
When developing local actions, steer away from using the national terminology of ‘fuel
poverty’ and develop more positive and empowering statements such as affordable warmth,
warm homes or warm zones to encourage participation and avoid stigma. Communicating the
wider community and economic benefits is also important, including: saving money, reducing
fuel bills, improving health and reducing carbon emissions.
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Affordable warmth is the ability to heat a home to an
adequate level for household comfort and health without
developing a debt as a result. The lack of affordable
warmth is known as fuel poverty.
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Why is rural affordable warmth important?
Rural households are twice as likely as urban households to
struggle to afford to heat their homes. National Energy Action
(NEA)1 estimates that the number of rural households having
difficulties heating their homes reached 1.1 million in 2010 - that
means more than one in four rural households are struggling to
keep their homes warm. The impact of this on the health and
wellbeing of rural communities is significant. Research by the
Rural Services Network2 into the impact of fuel poverty in three
rural communities in East Riding, Shropshire and Durham, found
that the households struggling with heating costs were more
likely to have someone suffering from cold related illnesses such
as asthma, be experiencing fuel debt problems, be rationing fuel
and going without other essentials in order to heat their homes.
There are many things you can do to help deliver more
affordable warmth, such as running home energy efficiency
campaigns or facilitating heating oil buying clubs. Examples of
solutions and further information sources are included at the back
of this resource.
Multiple objectives can be achieved by addressing affordable warmth in rural communities, including:
improving the health and wellbeing of rural residents thereby reducing health service costs, reducing
carbon emissions and helping to tackle climate change, reducing inequalities and delivering more
sustainable rural communities.
Factors Affecting Affordable Warmth in Rural Communities
Rural homes are less energy efficient: a third of rural households are pre-1930’s properties of solid
wall construction which makes them very energy inefficient – 35% of household heat can be lost through
un-insulated walls. Solid wall homes are more expensive to insulate than homes with cavity walls.
Many rural homes face higher off mains gas fuel costs: 37% of rural households do not have mains
gas and are reliant on fuels such as electric heating, heating oil and LPG to heat their homes which can
be more expensive.
Lower average rural wages: there are significant pockets of poverty in rural areas where people are
dependent on low average wages and basic pensions or seasonal employment.
1 National Energy Action (NEA) promotes energy efficiency initiatives to combat fuel poverty
2 The Depth and Impact of Rural Fuel Poverty, Rural Services Network for the CRC September 2010
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What can you do to address fuel poverty in your Community Led Plan?
A Community Led Plan (CLP) will allow your
community to identify the extent and impact of
fuel poverty in your area. A CLP will identify any
actions and opportunities to help deliver more
affordable warmth ensuring that everyone can
get involved and contribute their ideas, time and
resources to bringing about change.
Using the LEAD framework, some pointers are provided below to help you consider how to
promote affordable warmth when putting together a plan for your area.
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To produce a good quality plan for your area,
your community will need to progress through
the 9 steps outlined in the ACRE Community
Led Planning Toolkit, which can be summarised
as ‘LEAD’.
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Launch the Plan
When starting out, it’s advisable to interest as many people, organisations and service providers as
possible in your Community Led Plan. This will increase support for your plan and make it easier in the
long run to deliver any actions you propose for your area. When forming your steering group, make sure it
comprises a cross section of people from your community.
You may also want to let other professionals know about your plan at this stage. For instance, many local
authorities have an officer leading on housing, energy, climate change and fuel poverty issues who may be
interested to know about your community’s intention to produce a Community Led Plan, particularly if you
think actions relating to affordable warmth might arise. Likewise, many health service providers have an
interest ensuring vulnerable households are able to heat their homes properly. Your local Citizens Advice
Bureau may also be involved in issues relating to fuel poverty, fuel debt and energy efficiency advice.
Stage 2 -
Evidence local need and aspiration
As you begin to research your Community Led Plan, it is important
to find out whether affordable warmth is an important issue locally.
You can find out whether this is the case by gathering existing facts
and information about your area and speaking to local people.
You can gather existing facts and information about affordable
warmth from different sources. Often it can be helpful to contact your
local authority to see what information they can provide on off gas
areas, fuel poverty and housing condition. Many will have existing
strategies, reports or survey data (such as English Housing
Condition Surveys) that could be relevant to both your community
and your wider local area.
Try to find out how many communities in your area are not connected to mains gas, what heating fuels are
mainly used (LPG, oil, solid fuels, electric), whether many households have undertaken any energy
efficiency improvements (such as insulation) or heating upgrades, and what issues are being experienced
locally on the cost of heating fuels?
The most important thing to do however, is consult everyone locally to find out what they think about
affordable warmth and whether this is an important enough topic to feature in your plan. When speaking to
members of your community, you might find it useful to ask the following questions:
Questions to explore affordable warmth through the CLP consultation
1. Is affordable warmth perceived to be important locally? Is there a widespread appetite for taking
action to address it as part of the plan?
2. Are any organisations and groups in your community already taking actions on affordable warmth?
Such as:
• activities to improve home energy efficiency
• fuel buying syndicates and clubs
• activities to promote and invest in renewable heat such as air and ground sources heat pumps
and biomass/wood fuelled heating.
3. What grants and programmes are available nationally and locally to help with energy efficiency and
fuel poverty?
You can do this using a range of different consultation methods to speak to people on their own terms.
These are detailed in Step 4 of ACRE’s Community Led Planning Toolkit.
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Agree and prioritise actions
Once you have gathered sufficient information about your community, you will need to decide
whether affordable warmth is a priority issue to be addressed in your plan. This should be
considered alongside evidence of any other social, economic, cultural and environmental issues
you are aware of. This may require further consultation with your community as explained in Step
5 of ACRE’s Community Led Planning Toolkit.
•
If heating oil is the main fuel used locally? If it is, actions could focus on
helping to facilitate oil buying groups for clusters of houses to help
reduce costs.
•
If most houses have explored energy efficiency improvements? If they
haven’t, actions could focus on providing households with advice on
how to save energy in the home and identify any local or national
insulation programmes that could help.
•
If clusters of off gas households have very old inefficient heating
systems? If they do, renewable solutions such as ground and air
source heat pumps or biomass / wood fuelled heating systems could
be explored as an action.
Another action is to identify funding and resources that are available at a
local, regional and national level to deliver affordable warmth. NEA
maintains a database of regional and national programmes to address fuel
poverty and many local authorities and energy supply companies also
provide grants to some households.
Remember, any actions that you develop should be ‘SMART’, e.g. Specific,
Meaningful, Appropriate, Realistic and Timed. ACRE’s Community Led
Planning Toolkit has more details on this. You should also make sure that
anyone that has an interest in affordable warmth locally is included in this work.
Stage 4 -
Deliver and monitor actions
As you begin to implement the work in your plan, remember to maintain positive relationships
with all those who have an interest in the work that you are doing to raise awareness of
affordable warmth and fuel poverty issues in your area. As the work builds momentum, you
may well attract additional support for what you are trying to achieve, especially if it is helping
other organisations such as the local council, housing and health organisations deliver on their
objectives to improve health and wellbeing, improve energy efficiency and reduce carbon
emissions.
Finally, it is recommended that you review your entire plan regularly, probably every 2 to 5
years. If you originally proposed actions relating to affordable warmth, then check to see
whether they have been achieved or not and whether it remains a priority. Understanding what
has been successful can be useful for informing future planning.
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If your community wants to address affordable warmth in your plan, you
may need to undertake some further investigative work to plan specific
actions that you can take forward. You may want to find out, for example:
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Case Studies
Oxfordshire Bulk Oil Buying Scheme
Oxfordshire Rural Community Council (ORCC) has set up a communitybased countywide oil buying syndicate. The aim of the syndicate is to
reduce the cost of heating oil to communities by combining orders into one
purchase and negotiating the best possible price. It also aims to coordinate oil deliveries across the whole county in a streamlined way to
minimise the carbon footprint and reduce congestion on rural roads. The
scheme is administered by ORCC Trading Ltd, a not for profit enterprise.
There are currently over 300 members of this oil buying scheme and 30 community co-ordinators.
Volunteer community co-ordinators gather orders from members in their local areas and send to ORCC
Trading Ltd, who in turn negotiates with oil suppliers on members’ behalf to obtain the best price for a
bulk order. Members save an average of £50 on a 1000 litre delivery.
To become a member of the syndicate, residents fill out a membership form and pay an annual domestic
membership fee of £20 (£30 for community buildings membership and £100 for businesses
membership). Members can then order oil as many times as they need to during the year. The member
contacts their community co-ordinator with their heating oil order. Once a month the community coordinator informs ORCC Trading Ltd of the total amount of oil needed in their area and ORCC Trading
Ltd negotiates with suppliers to obtain the best price for a bulk oil order. ORCC Trading Ltd tells the
community co-ordinator when to expect a delivery and how much it costs. Once it is confirmed the oil
supplier contacts the member directly with a delivery date. The member pays the oil supplier direct for
their delivery.
For further information visit: http://www.oxonrcc.org.uk/home/bulk-oil-buying-scheme
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Somerset West Hard to Treat Homes
Somerset West Hard to Treat Homes is an
area based grant programme to fund
improvements to old and cold rural properties.
The scheme offers householders grants of up to 25% off solid-wall insulation, more complex loft
insulation and floor insulation – up to a maximum of £2,500 per property. Householders on lowincomes will be offered low interest loans to cover the other 75% of the works. The scheme
covers Sedgemoor, Taunton Deane and West Somerset, and is available to all on a first-comefirst-served basis. By pooling resources and funding, this new and pioneering initiative will
improve many householders’ thermal comfort and improve their general wellbeing and at the
same time reduce their fuel bills.
For further information visit: http://www.cse.org.uk/projects/view/1154
FREE Initiative West Midlands
In the West Midlands the Future of Rural Energy in England
(FREE) initiative is working directly with parishes and parish
plan groups to raise awareness of rural fuel poverty in their
community. This takes place via workshops, after which
FREE Energy Advisors work with individual parishes to
devise an action plan, and community projects/events to
address the issue locally. The aim of these workshops is to
help key people in the parish (i.e. parish councillors and
parish plan steering group members) to understand how rural
fuel poverty exists within their parish and to highlight some of
the ways in which communities and individuals can act on
fuel poverty. Speakers from community groups who have
undertaken a sustainability action plan will offer advice to other communities undertaking similar
processes. Following the initial workshops the FREE initiative will work more intensively with
three parishes in Shropshire and three in Herefordshire to develop an action plan and
community projects, such as a community warmth/energy efficiency events, home energy
surveys, community green days or other topical projects.
For further information contact: [email protected]
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In the winter of 2010/11, many people across
parts of Somerset living in hard-to-treat homes
(solid walls and off gas network) faced a
choice between a cold home – or a very high
fuel bill, which they could often ill afford. With
rising energy prices this problem is only going
to get worse. Three district councils in
Somerset West, in partnership with the energy
supplier Scottish and Southern Energy and the
Centre for Sustainable Energy, are running an
area based grant scheme for rural solid wall properties.
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Further information and support
Information and help is available on energy efficiency and fuel poverty. Good places
to start are:
Rural Community Action Network (RCAN)
RCAN members are charitable local development agencies, generally based at county level, which
support and enable initiatives in rural communities.
RCAN members can help you to develop a Community Plan for your area. Using ACRE’s Community
Led Planning Toolkit, they can guide you through all aspects of the process, from recruiting volunteers,
researching local facts and information, using the most appropriate consultation techniques and
broking the involvement of different stakeholders to help deliver the actions you propose.
Please visit the ACRE website for more information, including contact details of your nearest RCAN
member: http://www.acre.org.uk/our-work/community-led-planning
Future of Rural Energy in England (FREE)
FREE is a rural energy advisorship programme, aimed purely at off-grid communities across England.
This three year project is supported by Calor and involves ACRE, RCAN and National Energy Action.
For further information and regional contact details visit www.calor.co.uk/about-calor/why-calorlpg/sustainability/free/england/
National Government
The Government has a range of mechanisms and programmes to tackle fuel poverty. Warm Front is
the Government’s main grant scheme to tackle fuel poverty through insulation. The ‘Green Deal’ is a
new mechanism under development which will put in place a framework to enable people to invest in
energy efficiency improvements without having to pay the upfront costs. Payments would be recouped
through a charge in installments on the energy bill paid for through the energy savings made. Also, the
extended Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) delivered through large energy suppliers, will in
future years focus more on encouraging solid wall insulation which is an opportunity for rural
communities. Energy suppliers are often looking for local partners to help deliver their CERT
obligations. The Government is also exploring how area-based community energy efficiency
partnerships led by local councils involving community groups and the private sector, could play a
more effective part in tackling fuel poverty locally.
For more information go to:
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/consumers/fuel_poverty/fuel_poverty.aspx
Local authorities
Your local authority may have an energy/fuel poverty and/or climate change officer who may be able to
help with information and advice. If not, the housing officer often has responsibility for energy
efficiency and fuel poverty within their remit.
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National Energy Action (NEA)
NEA is a national charity whose mission is to ensure that everyone in the UK can afford to meet
their energy needs in the home, sufficient for health, comfort and well being. NEA’s website has a
range of resources and advice to help communities tackle fuel poverty and a useful funding
database profiling national and local grant schemes.
For more information visit www.nea.org.uk
Energy Saving Trust
The Energy Saving Trust is the UK's leading impartial organisation helping people to save energy
and reduce carbon emissions. Their website has a range of tools and resources to help
communities save energy and they also provide tailored advice to community groups.
For more information visit www.energysavingtrust.org.uk
The Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes is a network of over 600 organisations from the
public, private and voluntary sectors. By working together they aim to reduce the energy
consumed by UK households as well as the number of people who are unable to sufficiently heat
their homes during winter (known as 'fuel poverty').
For more information visit http://www.eeph.org.uk/
Acknowledgements
This resource was produced by Action with Communities in Rural England (ACRE) in
collaboration with Calor.
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Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes (EEPH)
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FREE – The Future of Rural Energy
Since 2010, Calor has been running FREE – the Future of Rural Energy –
a 3 year, £1 million, rural energy advisorship initiative, aimed at tackling
fuel poverty and promoting energy efficiency in off gas grid rural
communities across England, Scotland and Wales. Bringing independent
advice and information to rural residents, the initiative is both helping
individual households to focus on their energy consumption and costs,
and also encouraging local communities to work together to promote best
practice in energy efficiency and carbon reduction.
Lack of assistance for rural communities
In a climate of rising bills and economic uncertainty, many people are worried about the cost of energy as
well as the environmental impact of their energy use. With off gas grid customers, this can be
exacerbated due to their more complex fuel options, housing types and social demographics. Their
circumstances may not always equate to social poverty – many of these households would be deemed
well off – but they face equally serious issues with energy efficiency and cost. Furthermore, rural
communities are facing pressure to contribute to the Government’s target of a 50% reduction in carbon
emissions by 2050, and fuel poverty alleviation by 2016, but with no realistic plan or support specifically
developed for the countryside.
FREE – a bespoke rural energy initiative
With 75% of its business taking place in off grid areas, Calor understands rural energy, and identified the
need for a bespoke solution to address the lack of both credible independent information and formal
assistance schemes relevant to rural householders. The FREE initiative, therefore, encompasses a suite
of materials specifically tailored to a range of rural properties, energy options and social demographics.
Furthermore, FREE is funding household energy audits in eight rural
communities across England, with the intention of ascertaining both the specific
nature of the rural housing stock, and the different behavioural, social and
technical solutions required in order to improve energy efficiency and reduce fuel
bills. Specialist rural energy advisors have been developed across the RCAN
network, helping off gas grid households to understand the full range of options
open to them.
Calor – the rural energy experts
Calor Gas Ltd is the leading supplier of LPG (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) to rural
homes and businesses, and has been serving rural communities since 1935.
Expert partners
FREE brings together a network of expert partners and specialist advisors,
comprising the national fuel poverty charity, National Energy Action (NEA), Action
with Communities in Rural England (ACRE), the Rural Community Action Network
(RCAN), the Energy Saving Trust (EST) and the Commission for Rural
Communities (CRC).
The overarching aim of FREE is to give to rural property owners a strong voice in
the energy efficiency debate, and the same opportunity to reduce their carbon
emissions and fuel costs as exists in urban on grid areas, getting bespoke advice
and help to the people that need it most.
If you would like to find out more about FREE, or would like copies of the bespoke rural energy resources
produced by Calor, the EST and NEA, please visit www.calor.co.uk/FREE
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