Findings from the British Gas Energy Trust fourth roundtable event
THE BRITISH GAS ENERGY TRUST 20TH ANNIVERSARY ROUNDTABLE PROGRAMME
Date: 18th July 2024
Location: Future Inn, Bristol
Objective: To ensure British Gas Energy Trust (the Trust) is supporting its local partner organisations as effectively as possible, with a particular focus on fuel poverty in rural communities and its relationship with mental health issues.
Jessica Taplin, Chief Executive of the Trust, who chaired the event, said: “Our roundtables are designed for the Trust to engage with and listen to our partners and stakeholders, to understand how we can do things differently and to identify earlier and new interventions to help more people avoid the detrimental impact of fuel poverty. We are taking these opportunities to gather as much knowledge as we can, to help inform our future thinking, strategy, and how we work going forward.”
Key themes: Speakers from a diverse range of community groups and support organisations in England, Wales and Scotland began by discussing their work in rural communities, and in particular the links between fuel poverty and mental health.
They highlighted a range of unique challenges that are particular to rural locations, where people can often feel isolated and don’t have access to the same kind of support networks that exist elsewhere. Many people still live off grid and the general cost of living can be much higher than in urban locations, exacerbating issues around fuel poverty.
Observations included:
Though small rural communities can be very close knit, there are still high levels of isolation and residents are often reluctant to share their struggles with fuel poverty or mental health with friends or family because they feel there is a stigma attached.
- Andy Pritchard, Chief Operating Officer of Mind in Somerset, said: “Smaller communities are much more tightly knit. Sometimes that can mean people can rely on their neighbours for support, but it also often means people aren’t prepared to open up about issues they face because they are worried about the stigma.”
- Kirsty MacLeod is an Energy Advice Manager at Tighean Innse Gall (TIG), which provides housing across the Western Isles of Scotland, where she said more than 80% of households are in fuel poverty. She said: “Living in a rural location can be isolating in itself, but fuel poverty adds another layer to that. People don’t come forward because they don’t want their neighbours to know that they are struggling, and this self-isolation can impact on their mental health.”
- Delivering support to people with fuel poverty and mental health issues can also be stressful for front-line workers, who also need mental health support themselves or else face burning out.
- Claire Summers, Service Delivery Manager at money advice charity Navigate, said: “If you’re not looking after your own mental health, then you can’t look after your clients. It can be very stressful dealing with people’s trauma and the frustration of working to secure them the support they need.”
Infrastructure in rural areas is not as developed as in urban locations, including transport, the internet and public services, which can present practical and cost barriers to accessing advice and support.
- People living in rural locations can be poorly served by public transport and other basic services which most people take for granted, presenting issues for service providers and users.
- Andy Pritchard said: “People are expected to travel to their nearest town to access services, which can take hours and is not practical or affordable. At the same time, a lot of support services are moving online, but connecting rural communities digitally is mired in challenges and, for many, having access to broadband is still a long way off.”
- Sandy Hore-Ruthven is Chief Executive Officer of Severn Wye Energy, a charity that works to tackle fuel poverty and climate change. He said: “If you live in Bristol, for example, and need to top up your pre-payment meter, there’s a Post Office five minutes up the road. In many rural communities that’s absolutely not the case. It means you almost certainly have to own a car, which contributes to a higher cost of living.”
- Kirsty MacLeod highlighted how the remoteness of the Outer Hebrides communities she works with presents challenges in delivering energy efficiency improvements like insulation. She said: “Because of where we are, it’s a lot more expensive to get materials and workers here to install things like insulation for homes.”
In rural areas there are still many homes that are off grid and not connected to mains gas or electricity. This is an underappreciated issue that is not often accounted for in national energy poverty strategies and requires a different set of solutions.
- Off-grid homes often cannot buy their energy in the usual way. Not only is energy more expensive, but not being able to pay in smaller regular instalments can be a fast-track to fuel debt, with a smaller number of people deeper in debt in rural areas.
- Kirsty MacLeod said that homes with gas and electricity have a £1,600 energy price cap set by OFGEM, but off-grid homes in the Western Isles must pay around £5,000 for the same level of heat. That’s unaffordable for many, who are forced to self-ration heat. She said: “Our research found 20% of homes only heat two rooms in the house. We’ve even seen situations where the entire family lives and sleeps in one room. The rest of the house has not been heated for months or even years, which causes major issues with damp.”
- Sandy Hore-Ruthven said: “27% of rural homes are not on the gas grid. That means they are either heated by electricity, which is expensive, or by a solid fuel like coal or wood, or oil. These households are faced with big payments of many hundreds of pounds once or twice a year, which can be very difficult to budget for and will often put people into debt in a very short period of time.”
Next steps: The panellists were asked to share strategies and solutions which they believe would prove effective in tackling fuel poverty in rural communities, particularly with residents who also suffer with mental health issues.
The quality of housing stock is much lower in rural locations, with stone-built houses with draughts more common. Prioritising retrofitting investment and support for these residents is key to deliver long-term improvements to quality of life and bills – and to ensure they’re not left behind in the pathway to Net Zero.
- Sandy Hore-Ruthven said: “In rural Welsh villages, 75% of homes are EPC rated D or below, compared to 55% in the UK as a whole. Installers don’t want to take on complicated homes, because they are not as profitable, so schemes like ECO don’t reach rural locations. We have got to invest in retrofitting rural homes to improve their energy efficiency; that’s how you solve the problem in the long term. On average, households pay £411 extra per year if they are EPC D rated or below, compared with a home that is EPC C rated or above.”
- Jo-Ann Paul is Director of the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) scheme for British Gas, which provides funding to make homes more energy efficient. She said: “We have hundreds of millions of pounds to spend on retrofitting homes. We spend a disproportionate amount of money in rural areas, but the reality is that for some rural properties, insulation often isn’t the solution because it can be prohibitively expensive, but we have other things in our toolbox, including solar and batteries. With Eco 4 coming to an end, there’s an opportunity to shape and influence the new programme with more rural considerations”.
- Kate Miles from the DPJ Foundation also highlighted that at least 1 in 8 people in rural areas live in affordable housing which also impacts on residents’ opportunities for retrofitting and energy efficiency savings.
Home visits and working in communities can be far more effective to understand and address the complex issues that peoples are facing, though this requires significant investment, especially in rural locations.
- Visiting people at home can enable a proper assessment of their personal circumstances. However, participants agreed that funding doesn’t allow for the nuanced debriefing involved in home visits, to share experiences with colleagues and to refer or seek advice with a wider network, as well as the vast geographical area organisations in rural locations cover, with additional time required to get between homes.
- Sandy Hore-Ruthven said: “Going into people’s homes to provide advocacy and advice is by far the best way to get results. You can see how people are living and learn things that you wouldn’t get from a phone call.”
- Katie Poole, Regional Director of housing association Sanctuary, said that they have a legal obligation to complete annual gas safety checks in all the homes they manage. This helps them identify cases where people are self-rationing energy and not topping up their pre-payment meters. They can then issue emergency funding and refer that person to local support agencies.
- Mel Allen, Chief Executive of Navigate, said: “Meeting our clients face-to-face in their homes means we can build up good relationships and they can learn to trust us, though this can take time. We have designed a needs assessment that helps us effectively identify a client’s individual needs and ways to overcome barriers to accessing help.”
- Sarah Smith, Senior Services Manager at Missing Link, which provides women’s mental health services in agricultural communities, said: “We have found that engaging with schools can be really effective. They have become more than just education providers and are operating as support hubs, hosting food banks and clothing banks, and they are a good way of proactively reaching people, generating referrals and sharing information.”
The need for funders to invest in organisations, not just projects has been a recurring theme in the four round tables that the Trust has hosted so far. Speakers in Bristol also emphasised that funding decisions must be made well in advance, to provide certainty for service providers, their employees and their clients.
- The panellists agreed that a one-sized fits all approach to funding does not work for rural areas due to the vast areas they cover, the need to network with wider organisations and holding on to valuable members of staff. They highlighted and that five-year funding packages would be optimal for the work they do and praised the National Lottery Community Fund for its approach.
- Longer-term, flexible funding provision would also help different specialist services work together to provide holistic support, and to change their strategy mid-program if they found a particular approach wasn’t proving effective.
- Sandy Hore-Ruthven said: “I’ve run charities all my life. Long-term funding makes such a difference. It means you can plan effectively, build strong teams and embed yourself in communities. In the energy sector, funding is typically only awarded for one or two years, which is a real problem.”
- Kirsty Macleod said: “Longer-term funding provides more certainty for staff. We lost a vital member of our team because they needed to know they had a job that was secure for longer than a year or two.”
- Andy Pritchard said organisations needed to know that funding was going to be renewed in good time in order to support recruitment and retention. He said: “Even if you get a five-year funding settlement, you need to know that it is going to be renewed for another five years in year four, or good colleagues will leave, and you lose valuable knowledge.”
Common themes
This was the fourth in a series of seven roundtables discussions being held around the country, which have so far focused on physical and mental health, young people, rural, and carers, and several common themes are now emerging:
- Fuel poverty is rarely an issue that exists in isolation and a holistic approach can better understand and address all the factors that contribute to fuel debt.
- Front-line organisations from different sectors (funders, charities, housing associations and local authorities) can work together more effectively to deliver support in this way.
- Longer-term funding provision can help front line service organisations plan more strategically and build stronger connections with the local community, ultimately delivering meaningful support. This needs to be prioritised in rural communities, with the vast geographical areas and distances taken into account, as well as the time it takes to develop the relationships.
- Those in debt, including energy debt, can experience feelings of shame and disillusionment, making them reluctant to seek help. There is a need to create an environment where they feel comfortable asking for help, recognising self-serve and digital is not suitable for the highest deciles of need.
- While providing ‘sticking plaster’ support such as fuel vouchers does not provide a long-term solution, it is an opportunity to build trust and establish longer-term relationships that can enable more permanent resolution.
To find out more about the roundtables, please click here.