Healthy Homes Home Energy Advisor Charlene Battams represents ECOE.
You would think that this time of year is quieter for the Healthy Homes for Wellbeing team, with the usual winter ‘busy’ period helping clients with a view to fighting fuel poverty now over. However, the summer period sees the team fully occupied with a different set of tasks. From May to August the team use this time wisely to complete any outstanding casework, catch up on paperwork, undertake refresher training, order stationery and equipment ready for next winter. Our project manager Tara Bowers’ most important job in this period is to ensure we have enough funding to see us through another year. Having just finished a record season for the project, this will be no mean feat.
There are some exciting new projects and partnerships planned for next winter, and in preparation for that we have recruited two new Home Energy Advisors (HEAs) to the team. We’ll share more about all of this soon.
Here’s a summary of the team’s amazing achievements for Winter 2020/21.
September 2020 to March 2021
Our six HEAs helped 1145 households with one to one advice sessions, either by telephone, or at home visits. Using the calculations provided by our funders, we will bring £1,023,225 in financial benefits to residents. This includes:
- Energy savings
- The cost of measures given to households for free
- Grants to households
- Debt and bill refunds and write offs
- New benefits and discounts.
Many households require multiple advice sessions, covering a range of needs. Our key funded projects during the season were:
- Big Energy Savings Network – Target of 375 households. Actual number helped was 597.
- Affordable Warmth Project funded by Western Power Distribution, (WPD) – Target of 500 households. Actual number helped was 516.
- Energy Affordability Project funded by WPD – A range of targets including 450 one to one advice sessions. Actual number achieved was 467.
- We carried out 517 LEAP telephone advice calls, and 172 LEAP follow up visits.
- And we held 16 sessions training frontline workers, telling them when Healthy Homes can help, with 122 attendees.
- We even managed three drop-in clinics, at Axminster Job Club, when none of our usual venues were open due to Covid-19!
