Evaluation of fuel poverty policies

We received funding from the Chesshire Lehmann Fund in 2014 to look at the impact that government policies are having on households in fuel poverty. We were able to analyse data we had collected from over 280 home energy checks to look at the uptake of grants to help with energy bills, energy efficiency schemes, and energy tariffs and the scope for switching suppliers. You can download the executive summary of our findings here.

 

 

Warm Homes Healthy People

BEAT has worked with a number of other public and voluntary sector organisations to deliver initiatives under the Warm Homes Healthy People programme, funded by the Department of Health. We did home energy checks for households, advising on switching energy tariffs, grants towards energy bills and free insulation and boiler schemes. We also advised on heating controls and general ways of saving energy in the home and households were able to have radiator panels, draught excluders and low energy light bulbs installed free of charge.

Sustainable Saltaire

Sustainable Saltaire is a community interest company, established to enhance the values on which the Victorian model village of Saltaire was founded: community, sustainability and enterprise. BEAT worked in partnership with Sustainable Saltaire, CO2Sense and JBA Consulting to reduce Saltaire’s carbon footprint. The ultimate aim being to produce a 10 year blueprint for taking action to reduce the energy demand of the historic village and increase renewable energy generation.

Thanks to DEFRA funding under the Local Energy Assessment Fund (LEAF), the following initiatives were undertaken in Saltaire to get more people involved in energy reduction and renewable energy generation:

• Household energy audits
• Study of the carbon footprint of Saltaire
• Community energy event
• Energy audits of community buildings
• Training for community energy champions
• Renewable energy feasibility assessment

For more information on Sustainable Saltaire and to download the project reports visit www.sustainablesaltaire.org

South Pennines LEADER energy programme

BEAT was awarded funding from the South Pennines LEADER fund in 2009 to provide 3 years of energy management support to community centres in the South Pennines LEADER area.

Centres were offered a package of support that included:

• independent energy audits, providing advice on billing and tariffs, heating systems, insulation, lighting, electrical appliances and renewable technologies
• capital funding to allow centres to implement energy efficiency recommendations made in the audit report
• training and workshops for centre managers
• exchange visits to enable centres to learn from each other
• newsletters.

For more information on this project please download the executive summary .

Big Lottery Community Cascade project

Thanks to the Big Lottery, BEAT was able to offer energy audits and energy training sessions to community buildings across the whole of West Yorkshire. This was an extremely successful partnership project run over four years. In addition to energy advice, community centres could also get help with applying for grant funding (from Fit4Funding), marketing (from Kirklees Council) and community cohesion (from COEMO in Bradford).