Affordable warmth strategy

Objectives

• increasing energy efficiency by having schemes to increase energy efficiency of domestic housing and give advice to residents across Leeds
• reducing fuel poverty by targeting fuel poor households with assistance, maximising the income of households in fuel poverty and reducing household bills
• improving health and wellbeing through increasing affordable warmth by improving household heating without increasing carbon emissions, crisis intervention for vulnerable people in cold homes (including heating installation and repairs) and help to prevent people falling into fuel poverty
• enabling residents to benefit from renewable energy

City wide private sector energy efficiency schemes

We will use whatever resources are available to make sure that as many private sector households as possible have access to cost effective energy efficiency measures.

At present, Leeds is working with the city region to provide heavily subsidised improvements to residents through the Better Homes Yorkshire scheme. The scheme uses Energy Company Obligation (ECO) funding to subsidise measures such as cavity wall and loft insulation for residents, although our ambition is to find funding so that householders can access a more extensive range of measures, including solid wall insulation.

Improvements to council housing.

Although much has been achieved through the Decent Homes Standard, some suitable properties are inevitably missed out and it is the intention of Leeds City Council to ensure that these can have cavity wall and/or loft insulation installed where appropriate.

Leeds City Council will also ensure that Council Tenants continue to have access to up to date heating systems as is currently the case through the Heatlease and Total Heat schemes.

Energy efficiency advice

Leeds City Council has a long standing ambition to ensure that all residents in the City have access to telephone advice on fuel bills, energy efficiency and schemes.

Currently the Energy Saving Trust provides detailed technical information on energy efficiency, however its nationwide advice line is unable to refer households to local schemes, therefore we will be working to ensure that all Leeds residents have access to local energy efficiency and fuel bill advice through the telephone and internet.

Area based energy efficiency schemes

Due to the wide variation in housing types and income levels across the city, energy efficiency schemes targeted at particular areas are sometimes necessary to ensure that those households are offered appropriate improvements.

One such scheme currently underway is the Green Deal Communities project which is installing subsidised external wall insulation in approximately 350 solid and steel framed wall properties in specific areas with those housing types. The project has been partly funded by a grant from the Department of Energy and Climate Change and we will continue to seek such funding opportunities in the future.

Improving private rented housing

As well as the sector having a high proportion of low income, hard to treat properties, tenants will have less of an investment in the property and be less inclined to invest in improvements to heating and energy efficiency. Similarly some landlords may be less engaged and unprepared to spend money on the property to maintain it to an acceptable standard.

The Affordable Warmth Partnership will continue to engage with landlords through landlords associations and the Leeds Landlords Accreditation Scheme, and will continue to work with the Leeds City Council private sector housing team to publicise enforce minimum energy efficiency standards due to come into force in 2016 and 2018.

Extension of gas mains to off-gas households

Leeds has many properties that are off of the gas network, most of which rely on expensive to run and difficult to operate electrical heating including storage heaters, under electric heating and plug-in electric heaters.

For many of these homes, gas central heating is likely to remain the most cost-effective way of improving heating for many years to come.

For this reason, Leeds is working closely with partners such as Northern Gas Networks and Community Energy Solutions to link more of these properties to the gas network.

Many of them are in low income areas of mixed tenure, so the challenge is to find a funding solution that will pay for both a gas connection and a heating system in both social and private sector housing.

Area renewal

Leeds has many areas with multiple problems such as low average incomes, high levels of private renting, expensive to insulate properties and lack of local amenities that require a cross departmental response in order to create a step change in the quality of the local environment.

Cross Green in East Leeds is one such area where several departments of the Council have cooperated with the voluntary sector to provide a material improvement to the whole of the local environment. The homes themselves have received packages including heating and solid wall insulation along with other renovations such as new doors and windows.

Fuel bill or income advice

During the 2012/13 and 2013/14 winter periods, Chapeltown CAB ran outreach sessions providing combined fuel bill and income advice to households. Many of these sessions were held in local schools and children’s centres, reaching working age households who have traditionally not received as much attention in terms of fuel poverty assistance as the elderly. Additionally, several partner organisations in Leeds, including CAB, Groundwork Leeds, Care & Repair and Age UK have provided advice to households and training to local groups as part of DECC’s Big Energy Saving Network. Our intention is for this sort of support to be provided on a year round basis and for support with more intractable problems with energy suppliers to be provided.

Local fuel tariff

Whilst households are advised to regularly check their energy tariff to see whether there is a cheaper one available, the domestic energy market in the UK is still seen as opaque and difficult to negotiate. Leeds City Council’s ambition is to provide residents with a trusted local energy tariff which would be easy for residents to understand, and would not share the pitfalls of many existing tariffs such as moving people onto expensive variable tariffs when fixed rate tariffs expire. In addition, many of Leeds’ lowest income residents use pre-payment meters as a way of budgeting for their fuel, yet traditionally they have not had access to the cheapest tariffs. One of the key aims of Leeds’ local fuel tariff will be to ensure that pre-payment customers are not penalised because of their payment method.

Heating improvements for those suffering from, or at risk of cold related illness

For many years, Care & Repair Leeds, supported by Leeds City Council, has managed the Warm Homes Service which provides heating improvements to low income private sector households where a resident suffers from a cold related illness. Where a resident requires an improved heating system or repair, the service will provide assistance in specifying the heating, seeking grant and other sources of funding to pay for that improvement and providing trusted contractors to carry out the work. The service also provides speedy repairs where a vulnerable resident would otherwise be left without heating or insulation. This service helps us to meet the NICE recommendations of providing tailored heating solutions to vulnerable residents, and hospital discharge services are trained to refer outpatients to them, helping to ensure that vulnerable people are discharged into a warm home.

Home visits providing energy efficiency and fuel bill advice to vulnerable households

Groundwork Leeds, supported by Leeds City Council manage the Green doctor Service, which visits vulnerable low income households of all tenures in their homes with energy efficiency advice, assistance with fuel tariffs and bills along with small scale energy efficiency measures such as the installation of draft proofing and reflective radiator panels. Where the resident is in need of a larger more expensive measure, such as heating or insulation, the Green doctor can refer the household directly to other schemes such as the warm Homes Service and Better Homes Leeds. This service helps us to meet NICE’s recommendation of identifying people at risk of ill health from living in a cold home.

Planning for cold and severe weather

A key aspect of affordable warmth is ensuring that people have the help they need during periods of cold weather. Leeds City Council, led by the Public Health department convenes a severe weather planning group aimed at ensuring that vital public services across Leeds, both within and outside of the Council, are geared up to assist the most vulnerable residents during severe weather. The group coordinates efforts across the city to identify those at risk of ill health from living in a cold home as well as to inform and train health and social care professionals to help residents identified as living in a cold home and educate them on how to keep warm in accordance with the NICE guidelines.

One of the main functions of the group is to conduct publicity campaigns to ensure that the right messages are conveyed to the public as well as front line staff and volunteers, and that guidance from the Department of Health’s Cold Weather Plan is followed. It includes representatives from Public Health, the Sustainable Energy and Climate Change Team, Emergency Planning, Social Services and Clinical Commissioning Groups and reports directly to the Health Improvement Board

Supporting people during the cold weather

For the past three years, Public Health and the Clinical Commissioning Groups have commissioned additional and expanded services aimed at helping people during cold weather. As well as providing additional funding for the Warm Homes Service and Green Doctor to cope with additional seasonal demand, the group has also commissioned the following additional services:

• distribution of winter wellbeing packs containing thermal clothes and other supplies, to elderly and vulnerable residents through voluntary groups and other local networks
• provision of small grants to local and city wide voluntary sector organisations for projects to help people during the cold weather. Projects which reduce social isolation amongst vulnerable residents are encouraged and have included lunch clubs, drop-in sessions, knitting groups, assisted shopping and transport, home visits, crisis payments, emergency homeless accommodation and advocacy support (see appendix 1 for full list of 2014/15 small grants funded projects).

This year Public Health and the South and East, and North Clinical Commissioning Groups, have re-designed their additional funding for the Warm Homes and Green Doctor services as a three year contract to provide a comprehensive Warmth for Wellbeing service encompassing advice with energy efficiency and heating improvements to residents most at risk of ill health. This service is intended to supplement existing Warm Homes Service and Green Doctor support and should go some way to providing the year-round single point of contact health and housing referral service recommended by NICE.

Awareness raising and referrals

One of the key barriers to improving affordable warmth is finding a way to engage with those people who are most difficult to reach. Some residents may be elderly and socially isolated and may not have much contact with traditional outreach services such as libraries and one stop centres. Similarly, residents of some communities may experience language barriers and have difficulty obtaining information from the traditional channels. Many of the NICE guidance’s key recommendations relate to training and awareness raising of cold related ill health amongst a wide range of professionals and volunteers. To address this, the partnership’s approach is to engage organisations and services that are more likely to have contact with these households, to train them to recognise whether a resident might be having difficulty keeping warm so that they can refer them to further assistance.

Over the years, many front line services and teams have been trained by Leeds City Council and its partners, including front line NHS services such as out of hospital care and long term conditions teams to refer households to the Warm Homes Service. The partnership will continue to train key front line staff in the health, social care and the voluntary sectors to maintain an awareness of affordable warmth and knowledge of the help available.

Leeds photovoltaic solar panel scheme

Housing Leeds is currently working on a project to install solar photovoltaic panels on the roofs of 1000 council tenants across the City. The Council will be paying for the solar panels using capital funds and recouping the investment with the Government’s feed-in-tariff, which provides a subsidy for every kWh of electricity generated. The tenant gains any of the electricity generated for free, leading to a reduction in their electricity bills.

District Heating Networks

These heating networks, which use a single source of heat to warm multiple homes, are particularly suited to densely populated areas, for example those with large blocks of flats and closely packed town houses, particularly if they already rely on an obsolete form of heating, such as electric storage heating. The new energy from waste plant currently under construction in Leeds will provide a large source of heat available to homes and businesses in the City. Planning is currently underway to pipe a large proportion of this heat to St James’ Hospital in the East of the City, providing an opportunity to overhaul the heating in the surrounding areas of flats and houses including Little London, Lincoln Green, Ebor Gardens and Burmantofts, many of which were built in the post war era with all-electric heating.

Additionally, Leeds has successfully applied for European funding to install a biomass communal heating system in the New Wortley area of Leeds. This is providing heating to 264 dwellings consisting of a sheltered housing complex and surrounding system built properties, many of which were also improved with external wall insulation.

Renewable Heat Incentive

Like the feed-in tariff the renewable heat incentive is a Government scheme that subsidises energy generated through renewable sources, albeit in this case heat. In 2015, Housing Leeds successfully signed up approximately forty properties with air source heat pumps to the domestic RHI, generating a small income of approximately £100,000 over the next seven years that can be reinvested in energy efficiency. Leeds City Council is currently investigating other options to utilise the RHI, for example to finance ground source heat pumps in more rural off-gas areas by developing bridging finance to cover part of the initial capital cost before it is paid back through the RHI.