Tackling Fuel Poverty- Conference Blog

On the 19th of September Mydex CIC’s Chief Executive, David Alexander, was invited to chair Holyrood Event’s “Tackling Fuel Poverty in Scotland” conference. The context for the timing of the event is the recent publication by the Scottish Government of the Fuel Poverty (Target, Definition and Strategy) (Scotland) Bill and draft Fuel Poverty Strategy. This was great timing for us too, as we bring the EPCAS Project - which has focused on demonstrating how time, cost, effort and friction can be taken out of journeys supporting citizens to achieve affordable warmth - to a a successful close.

Holyrood Events introduced the aim of the conference as being to:

Scrutinise priorities for the Fuel Poverty Bill and Energy Efficient Scotland: Route Map — from energy efficiency programmes and retrofitting, to new energy performance regulations and good practice in addressing fuel poverty.

This was a great opportunity for me to attend as a delegate and meet other people working to address various aspects of the complex challenge presented by fuel poverty. As David said in his introduction:

Without doubt there is a complex range of factors leading to fuel poverty and tackling each of them in a coordinated way is essential if we are to move the needle for the 28% of the households in fuel poverty in Scotland as at 2016, some 700,000 as national statistics define them. Those factors are often summarised as; Income -earnings and benefits; energy costs; poor energy efficiency; how energy is used in the home. I am sure we are going to hear that there is a wider set of factors at play as well.

The conference included excellent presentations from a broad range of academic, practitioner and policy perspectives. Dr Keith Baker gave the opening presentation, which offered a lot of food for thought on the best approaches to targeting fuel poverty initiatives. Dr Baker and his colleagues Dr Ron Mould and Scott Restrick, argue in a recent publication that addressing fuel poverty primarily as an issue of energy efficiency in the home is limited and will not, ultimately, be successful. At the conference, Dr Baker highlighted their view that a “folk first”, rather than a “fabric first”, approach was needed.

Delegates discussing this presentation generally agreed with the idea of “folk first” and observed that it is happening to some extent. However they said it is patchy and not embedded. Several delegates highlighted that a “folk first” approach requires ongoing work, often needing repeat visits and support for citizens over time.

Dr Baker also argued for the use of “dynamic, risk-based metrics of vulnerability to fuel poverty”; this something that will definitely require a very different approach to the organisation-centric, non-sharable approach that is currently used to capture and store data relevant to addressing fuel poverty. It was great to notice how the capability we have built in the EPCAS project could be a strong enabling factor in achieving such an approach.

Next we heard a rural perspective on tackling fuel poverty from Becky Hart, Corporate Responsibility Manager at Calor. Becky highlighted that urban fuel poverty is at 23% of households but rural is at 37% and the fuel poverty gap, i.e. cost of getting out of fuel poverty is greater in rural areas. She explored the many factors that led to this being the case and made an argument for adjusting the proposed fuel poverty definition to take account of differences between rural and urban households.

We also heard from Craig Salter, Senior Policy Officer, Citizens Advice Scotland, who shared findings from recent research about how people living in fuel poverty perceive their own situation and how that can lead to reduced uptake of services intended to help them. That is many people in fuel poverty don’t define themselves as being fuel poor and would not seek help from services offering to help them as fuel poor.

Last in this section we heard from Stephen McLellan, Director at Recovery Across Mental Health about the links between poverty, fuel poverty, mental health, health more generally and loneliness and isolation. Stephen’s solutions included, getting help to people sooner, providing relevant information in a timely manner and creating healthy environments.

The differences in factors affecting fuel poverty in rural areas resonated strongly with delegates. Delegates discussing these three presentations were also struck by just how complex the issue is and how fragmented current solutions are.

The last three presentations included “Affordable To Heat, Low Carbon Homes For All” by Elizabeth Leighton of the Existing Homes Alliance, who argued that the target in the Bill should be adjusted to The target should be changed to 0% by 2032, which Existing Homes Alliance think is possible.

Following Elizabeth was Ross Armstrong, Managing Director, Warmworks Scotland, who talked about how Warmworks aim to ensure national standards are applied across all local authority areas, by subcontracting installation of energy efficiency measures delivered under Warmer Homes Scotland to a network of 21 local subcontractors across Scotland. He said they use these small and medium sized enterprises to deliver same quality and standards to anyone in the central belt or in the islands.

Finally we heard from Ben Miller from Smarter Energy GB, who told us that their view is that being able to disaggregate data around home energy usage is key and highlighted that this comes with consent issues.

David summarised the delegate’s key findings from the day in which there was a strong consensus from the practitioners and domain experts working on fuel poverty every day:

• The definition of fuel poverty in the Bill needs to be adjusted to better support the differences between rural and urban housing stock and heating fuels and to take account of the dynamic nature of both vulnerability and resilience to fuel poverty.
• The Bill needs to be improved overall in ambition and scope and the time for stakeholders to act to influence this is now through the Local Government and Communities Committee call for written views. This is being undertaken as part of the Committee’s Stage 1 scrutiny of the Bill. The call is available on the Parliament’s website at the following link: http://www.parliament.scot/parliamentarybusiness/CurrentCommittees/109649.aspx. The closing date for submissions is Friday 9 November 2018.
• EPC (Energy Performance Certificates) for properties need to be changed to reflect a better set of measures and tests, to categorise homes more realistically, it is not working as is because it is used to classify the type of support citizens can get and the way it is done is not practical
• Folk first and whole person/ whole household approaches need to be core in the future as they allow for personalised and tailored services and support that people will embrace.
• A broader set of factors need to be taken into account when tackling fuel poverty. There is a much broader range of inputs and factors involved in fuel poverty than are typically taken into account in any one household and we need to adopt a more holistic approach.
• Collaboration is needed; National and local levels need to be able to work together in ongoing relationships since it is not a single intervention required but sustainable and repeated support.
• Prevention is better than cure, keeping people out of fuel poverty and away from ending back up in fuel poverty.
• Words are really important. Stigma exists in terms like “fuel poverty” and “deprivation”; we need to change the language to more positive messages, e.g. “warm home”, as part of improving engagement with people who need it most.
• Leverage the talent. There was passion, expertise and knowledge in the room at this conference. This should be leveraged it to ensure policy is fit for purpose and implementable with enthusiasm.

We conclude by sharing our reflections about how the assets developed during the EPCAS Project could make a difference:

Trust is crucial. Citizens need to be able to trust those that provide support and help them in tacking challenges. Initiatives need to demonstrate sensitivity to and understanding of citizen’s lived experience and translate this into the approach taken by services and to the governance of those services. Like many other social enterprises, trust is integral to our approach and entire operations. For example, Mydex is incorporated as an asset locked Community Interest Company and the Web App Generator developed within EPCAS will be available under an Open Government License.

Joining the dots is key and the right kind of technology can help with that. There are many, potentially overlapping, initiatives and pots of money. Clusters of local organisations working to support the individual and the household, coming together will be crucial to overcoming the fragmentation in the system. This involves putting data sharing in the control of citizens so that their specific circumstances and needs can be taken into account. Clusters of organisations can use the Web App Generator to take a human-centred approach; they can take an approach that is enabled-by rather than led-by technology. Access to disaggregated data including consumption and entitlements is needed to remove the friction, risk and cost in achieving outcomes for citizens and personal data stores enable this to happen more easily and in a GDPR compliant way.