Written by Kate Unwin, director at Yorkshire Energy Doctor CIC
Energy prices will rise by 10% on 1st October and National Energy Action estimate that 6 million households across the UK will be in fuel poverty, spending 10% or more of their household income on their energy bills. How do we support so many people? What about those residents who don’t come forward to ask for help, perhaps not knowing who to ask or assuming there is nothing available for them?
As a fuel poverty advice agency, we have put an increased focus on training for other frontline agencies in recent years. We strongly believe that one of the best ways to reach households is to embed energy knowledge within local organisations, community groups and frontline staff who are trusted and who are already supporting vulnerable households with other challenges.
As such, we started our Community Energy Ambassadors project in April 2020, thanks to funding from Northern Gas Networks. We had originally planned on running in-person training courses but the onset of the Covid pandemic meant that, along with everyone else across the country, we had to quickly learn how to use Zoom and revise our training content accordingly. Since that time, we have run 58 online courses, equipping 725 individuals from 295 organisations across the north of England with up-to-date knowledge and practical resources that they can use to support residents with energy costs.
Due to the ever-changing landscape, we circulate regular newsletters and hold online update events twice per year for our network of Energy Ambassadors. We provide information sheets, checklists, and content for social media or newsletters, and ask our network to share as far and wide as they can.
The course is now CPD-certified and the project has certainly reached far more households than we could ever have done ourselves. Our Energy Ambassadors have reported savings of £225,323 to clients they support, reaching nearly 10,500 households with 1-2-1 advice. We believe these figures to be conservative as they are only based on a response rate of 10% of attendees of our courses (always difficult to get people to fill in survey forms!).
Expanding to Climate Ambassadors?
Based on the success of our Energy Ambassadors project, we have recently received funding from North Yorkshire Council’s Shared Prosperity Fund to develop a new Community Climate Ambassadors training initiative. It’s been said that community level action is the ‘missing piece’ in tackling climate change but how do we stimulate action at a local level?
Our new course targets representatives of parish or town councils, community building management committees, VCSE organisations or interested local residents who want to learn more about climate change, the impact of our day-to-day activities, and the multitude of co-benefits of taking climate action. Importantly, attendees then have the opportunity to hear from inspirational speakers talking about what their communities are already doing across North Yorkshire to reduce carbon emissions and 'go green'. We take a practical approach to looking at what we can all do, no matter how big or small, and it aims to give attendees the tools and knowledge to discuss the topic with others.
It is early days but we hope that by bringing people together from different communities we will inspire local action, no matter how big or small, in the same way that our Energy Ambassadors project has done.
You can find more information about all of the training courses offered by Yorkshire Energy Doctor CIC here.
