![An energy adviser discussing energy efficiency measures next to a different image of a Citizens Advice Scotland frontline worker in an office with a mother and baby](/sites/default/files/media-entities/images/2024-07/Centre-for-Sustainable-Energy-Citizens-Advice-Scotland.jpg)
Our recently published Vulnerability and Carbon Monoxide Allowance (VCMA) annual report outlines our work to help vulnerable customers stay safe and warm.
Group Social Impact and Vulnerability Manager Kerry Potter talks about how we’re working with partners to provide targeted support for customers struggling to afford energy in the most vulnerable geographical areas within our networks.
Households in fuel poverty are at increased risk of using unsafe appliances or fuels to heat their homes as well as rationing their energy use, which can lead to cold, damp homes. These measures all negatively impact household health, safety and wellbeing.
According to the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the number of households who spend more than 10% of their income (after housing costs) on energy rose in 2023 to 8.91 million. This is over a third of households (36.4%), up from around a quarter of households (27.4%) or 6.66 million in 2022. Scottish households are particularly impacted, with Energy Action Scotland reporting that one in three are in fuel poverty. Even before the cost-of-living crisis, many families were finding their energy bills unaffordable.
Citizens Advice research highlights that energy debt has been on a particularly steep upward trend since the pandemic. While we did see the energy price cap lower this year, it coincided with increased costs for housing, food and other household essentials.
Partnering with trusted organisations allows us to deliver essential support to address these issues. But we’re not just tackling the immediate needs of households in fuel poverty crisis but also addressing the causes of fuel poverty to build long-term financial resilience. We look to partner with organisations that can provide crisis support, energy efficiency advice and energy bill advocacy to ensure that customers in fuel poverty get support to manage their immediate needs.
We also partner with trusted energy advice partners who support customers to access energy efficiency schemes, so households who are struggling to afford to heat their homes get the help they need to improve the energy efficiency of their home in the longer term.
Case study: Centre for Sustainable Energy
By partnering with Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) to deliver our Safe and Warm Community Scheme, we’re able to help these organisations supporting financially vulnerable communities with both funding and skills to provide energy advice and energy safeguarding services.
Since launching the scheme, we’ve provided 43 grassroot organisations with the skills and resources to help frontline support workers lift hard-to-reach households out of fuel poverty and provide energy safeguarding services. So far, we’ve helped almost 19,000 vulnerable households with energy triage and crisis support.
In addition to identifying small organisations that are well placed to support communities, CSE helps these organisations with initial funding applications and project implementation. We work closely with them to understand the challenges faced by local communities and, as a direct result, we’ve run engaging online and in-person workshops for representatives and their frontline workers to ensure each organisation gets the support they need to deliver to their clients.
By building in more networking events, we’re opening up opportunities for both ourselves and funded partners to share insight and best practice, collaborate on solutions, make local connections, and learn about regional and locally relevant offers and grants.
Sharing knowledge and convening partners fosters innovation, and we’ve seen specialist support organisations apply innovative approaches and engagement methods to working with vulnerable people. For example, Community Drug & Alcohol Recovery Services (CDARS) integrated energy advice into gardening and craft sessions to build trust with their service users. Similarly, the Afghanistan and Central Asian Association integrated energy advice into a boat trip to address low uptake in their home energy workshops.
A frontline worker from Network of International Women for Brighton & Hove said: “This training and information proved to be invaluable resources for our organisation. They have significantly enhanced our capacity to provide impactful energy advice confidently and safely to our customers. The field of energy advice often contains a wealth of information, sometimes with conflicting advice. However, we found the resources provided comprehensive and well-suited to our specific needs.”
Case study: Citizens Advice Scotland
Through our partnership, we aim to support up to 6,400 vulnerable households living in fuel poverty and in harder to reach communities through dedicated and skilled energy advisers. Since March 2022, we’ve helped over 4,690 Scottish households struggling with energy costs in the most deprived parts of our network, helping 2,217 vulnerable households with their energy needs this year alone.
We’ve achieved this by building on the learning of our 2021-22 pilot with Citizens Advice in the north of Scotland, developing our Safe and Warm programme to expand the service into regional communities identified as being in greatest need through our Vulnerability Index and where there is no existing dedicated energy advice service.
As part of this programme, we also provided energy advice training for 700 frontline workers, covering topics including energy efficiency, the Priority Services Register and carbon monoxide awareness. It’s through this training we see the most vulnerable customers referred into the service. Frontline workers will support an average of 57 clients each, leaving a legacy and a reach of almost 40,000 people. We’ve gained real-time insight into customer need and gaps in services across Scotland and identified the need for in-depth caseworkers to deal with the complexity of issues.
A Citizens Advice Scotland service user said: “The energy adviser helped us to apply for things we were entitled to – unbelievable. Getting a new boiler and radiators, smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Getting benefits we never knew about and debt written off. We can never thank her enough for her assistance.”
Find out about more of our partnerships in our VCMA Annual Report 2024 here.