Funded Energy Redress Projects

The project will support vulnerable communities in Forth Valley and Loch Lomond and Trossachs National Park by delivering practical, energy-saving solutions that directly address fuel poverty. Through targeted awareness and engagement activities, energy advice sessions, and the development of energy-saving plans, the project will provide immediate relief to those at risk.

Local Energy Officers and Volunteer Energy Activators will work directly with individuals, ensuring support is tailored and accessible. A Community Energy Skills Academy will empower residents with skills in energy efficiency and will offer training and tools to community groups, addressing the needs of energy consumers in vulnerable situations and providing practical, long-term energy solutions.

The project will also demonstrate sustainable energy practices through community energy partnerships, ensuring that where communities share similar issues, they can be supported to work collaboratively on energy solutions. 

This is a pioneering project that employs an innovative, market-segmented research approach to accelerate self-funded domestic retrofitting in Plymouth. It targets a key market segment, known as Ready Prospectors; a highly motivated group with values aligned to retrofitting but who are significantly underserved by existing services.

This group is essential to upscaling retrofit as they are likely to be encountering important trigger points for retrofitting such as buying new homes, having children or inheriting money. To mobilise this group, the project will work with specialist behaviour change PR consultants, and evaluation specialists. Together, they'll utilise a Theory of Change model to co-design and develop retrofit service toolkits that address the group's unique psychological, financial, and practical barriers to retrofit, resulting in home energy improvements. 

The project is designed across three phases, with learning and insights feeding into service design at each stage, culminating in a final test of retrofit toolkits and online resources. By the end of the project, they will have created a vital online resource – the Plymouth Retrofit Hub, for the self-funded retrofit market. This will include case studies, links to trusted installers and contractors, and easy access to their retrofit advisor services. The project has wide-reaching implications for the sector; learning  will be widely disseminated through a webinar offer, evaluation reports and videos. 

This project will provide free Home Energy Checks and energy advice to older residents in Powys. A mobile energy roadshow van will reach rural pensioners impacted by location-based vulnerability. Energy roadshows will be delivered in over 170 rural communities across Powys, providing energy advice, distributing energy-saving equipment, engaging with pensioners in underserved areas. 

Home-based installations of simple energy-saving measures are urgently needed for vulnerable Powys pensioners unable to increase the energy efficiency of their home themselves, and who cannot access assistance due to lack of services. Home Energy Officers will conduct Home Energy Checks in the homes of pensioners in greatest need, installing simple energy-saving equipment and providing personalised energy advice.

The project aims to improve wellbeing and confidence for vulnerable energy consumers by providing advice and referrals to mitigate the impact of energy costs. The project will support people to manage their bills, fix energy arrears, access fuel vouchers, and advise on fuel options, available tariffs and grants where possible.

This project will build on the successes of a previously funded project, to expand and cover both the city and county area, working with over 800 households.     

After providing direct support to households, they will signpost them to ongoing energy budgeting support advice to make a tangible long term difference to how people manage their finances into the future. 

This is a partnership project between Groundwork’s Green Doctors; Sunderland City Council, Health Housing and Communities and Citizens Advice Sunderland. Approximately 15% of households in Sunderland are classified as living in fuel poverty, higher than the national average of around 13% (gov.uk).  The project aims to address fuel poverty through in-depth and light-touch energy efficiency advice, focusing on damp and mould, often exacerbated by incorrect energy use. 

The project aims to support 3,300 households across Sunderland, providing tailored holistic energy efficiency advice in various settings to meet individual needs. To ensure the project’s sustainability and lasting impact, they will deliver training to frontline staff, enabling them to identify and address issues related to energy efficiency, damp, and mould effectively. 

The project will reduce fuel poverty, support behaviour change, and improve community resilience, helping residents live in safer, more comfortable homes. As a result of the project, residents will save money; experience improved wellbeing and reduce carbon emissions.    

Despite huge interest, ‘Able to pay’ householders in the UK are failing to benefit from effective retrofit services, denying them the benefits of retrofit including carbon reductions, comfort and cost savings. An increasing number of community-led organisations have an ambition to meet these consumers’ needs by delivering fee earning retrofit services and adopting associated business models. 

Recent research carried out by Centre for Sustainable Energy for Access Foundation demonstrates the scale of interest from the community-retrofit sector and sets out the range of challenges they face including lack of capacity, trained staff, and access to appropriate technical support and tools. 

Using a Community of Practice approach, the project will work with a collection of growing community retrofit services around the UK, all at different levels of maturity and development, but all on the ground and delivering retrofit services now, to assist their growth. 

They will help scale these aspiring Community Retrofit services, assisting the transfer of knowledge and expertise and accelerating the growth and maturity of their work whilst growing the sector more broadly and benefitting householders by increasing access to retrofit services. 

The project aims to deliver high quality energy advice to vulnerable older people living in Scarborough and Ryedale in, or at risk of, fuel poverty. They will work closely with local authorities, voluntary and health sectors, housing providers and statutory services to reach over 1,500 households.

The project will include a Warm Room provision; a space for people to stay warm during colder months thus reducing home energy costs, at three locations. Energy advice will be delivered through a combination of home-visits and at their office locations, advice will include: maximising income; dealing with fuel debt; getting better deals when market conditions allow; resolving disputes; referrals to energy efficiency programmes; priority services registration; support to reduce energy usage.

They will also create an Energy Hub to coordinate activity and knowledge share with other local organisations.

The project aims to reduce vulnerable householders bills, whilst maximising their income, and providing them with the lifelong skills to manage their energy consumption, through information events and casework level advice.

Project activities will include information sharing events held in the community i.e market stalls, library events to discuss reducing energy costs within the home.  Casework support will focus on improving energy knowledge, whilst empowering participants to make changes within the home to reduce their energy consumption.  The result of which will save them money whilst reducing their carbon footprint. 

Vulnerable households will be provided with winter warmth packs which will include practical items such as information about money management and crisis prevention, energy saving light bulbs, thermometers and other useful items to keep warm.

Energy appointments will be tailored to the individuals needs and explore; tariffs, bills and fuel options, switching energy suppliers, energy efficiency measures, and identifying available grants.

The project will address immediate needs of vulnerable energy customers through high quality energy advice, whilst supporting long-term solutions to fuel poverty by increasing engagement in retrofit programmes that will deliver warmer, more fuel-efficient homes.

This project will enable Groundwork’s Green Doctors to continue to respond to the needs of people in fuel poverty in six high need areas across England, providing in-home advice, small energy saving measures, and links to wider services. As part of the project, they will also increase their focus on retrofit opportunities, building retrofit suitability assessments into their energy advice, running awareness-raising events, and partnering with retrofit schemes to target customers who risk missing out on the benefits of warmer, more efficient homes.

They will work with vulnerable residents to understand their circumstances, co-developing tailored action plans to support their retrofit journey. This will include understanding the retrofit process and potential benefits, signposting to available schemes, support during installation, and improving capacity to optimally use new equipment/ measures. Learning will be used to encourage government and retrofit programme leads to routinely invest in inclusive, person-centred approaches, leading to more people benefitting from warmer, healthier homes.

Radio City Association (RCA) are an anchor organisation of local community wealth building activities and are constructing a community owned wind turbine in the hills above Kilbirnie with the purpose of reinvesting any surpluses achieved from the electricity generated back into the community to address the many challenges of the area of the Garnock Valley in North Ayrshire particularly the prevalence of poverty and deprivation, including fuel poverty, and build community capacity to better address educational, employment and health inequalities locally.

RCA secured capital funding from various organisations and funding streams, including the Energy Redress Scheme, to build the first 100% community-owned onshore wind turbine that will operate commercially, without the use of government price support mechanisms.

Owned solely by the community, the turbine will have the capacity to generate 7,839 MWh of clean electricity per year, the equivalent of powering 2,234 average UK homes, once operational. It will also deliver 3,324 tonnes of carbon emissions reductions annually.