Social Housing Providers, Energy Efficiency and Budgets...

[John]

A little while back, Mark Group manned a stand at the Chartered Institute of Housing event in Manchester. One of the promotions we held was a raffle to win an I-pad and every visitor to the stand from the local authority or housing association sectors were automatically entered by a badge scanner. The winner was picked at random shortly after and was from a medium sized not-for-profit housing Group in the East Midlands.

Due to gift policies, the I-pad was donated to the social landlord as a top prize for their own charitable raffle. As part of the award, I was required to give a 1 hour presentation on the economies of energy efficiency for a social housing provider. This served as part of our challenge to SHP's to Tackle Fuel Poverty in time for Winter 2014 by at least ensuring delivery of all the free measures possible.

It became clear shortly into the presentation that like so many housing providers, they had been affected by a long standing top-down budget plan that was designed to limit overheads rather than serve as a prescriptive budget to ensure property stock was steadily improved to maintain value and efficiency. They were therefore pleasantly surprised to learn that they could receive a free analysis of all their property survey data and receive a free proposition that identified all the properties that were eligible to receive free cavity, loft and HTT 3-storey insulation measures under our new Winter 2014 ECO scheme. They could then issue a PO for those addresses at zero value and we could crack on and get the measures fitted across their local and nationwide stock within a matter of weeks.

This made me realise that there was in all likelihood countless SHP's totally unaware that they own thousands of properties that could be insulated by Mark Group completely free in both CSCO and non-CSCO areas. I have since taken steps to plan a new marketing campaign to ensure the message gets out to SHP's across the UK but I would like to see particular progress made here by the East Midlands CAN group as the motivated champions of carbon reduction.

As a brief guide, you should/could be benefiting from the propositions below:

Free Measures for Winter:
- Free Virgin Cavity Wall Insulation (Pre-1992 Build Nationwide)
- Free Loft Insulation (<75mm existing within CSCO/Rural Areas)
- Free Room-in-Roof Insulation (Solid Wall Properties Nationwide)

Low Cost Measures for Winter:
- £199 inc VAT Loft Insulation (<75mm existing non-CSCO Nationwide)
- Air Source Heat Pumps (100% Funded via RHI) and External Wall Insulation (up to 50% funded via ECO & RHI Surplus) for Off-gas Properties

I therefore ask that every SHP reading this bulletin takes steps or gets in touch to ensure you have overseen delivery of all free/subsidised insulation to your stock before Christmas.

I believe from this campaign we could collectively tackle an additional 5000 properties in the east midlands this autumn/winter which could amount to a carbon reduction of around 125k tonnes and collective energy bill savings of around £1.25m by the winter of 2015.

If you are unable to supply your survey data to me, I will as an alternative be happy to offer free Webex/Phone training sessions on how to interrogate and identify eligible properties for the measures above using whatever asset data available to you from RdSAP surveys to simple building classification info. You should then choose 3 providers to supply a quote for comparison and simply select the option that represents the best quality and value to your business. I am happy to assist anyone with this process, even if you are not using Mark Group as a delivery contractor.

John - Support Manager (UK)
Mark Group
john.eghan@markgroup.co.uk

[JonBird]

Did you know that if you click on "user control panel" there is a section called "friends and foes". if you select the "manage foes" tab, you can select users which will be ignored by default. This mught be handy for ignoring people who consistently post thinly disguised adverts.

Of course, if nobody posted thinly disguised adverts there would be no need to do this.

[John]

Hi Jon,

I hope this reaches you before you add me to your 'foes?' list.

I am interested to understand what role you believe contractors/installers play in these forums - do you believe that CAN' members are better off by not seeing/hearing about what the installer funding marketplace has to offer at present? I would in all seriousness challenge you to explain further into your perspective of what this forum is about and how we could communicate better in that case?

To be clear, I work for an installer who has delivered over 2 million energy efficiency products to the UK and is tied into delivery of a multitude of public and private sector funding streams. I would hope its clear that my contributions to this forum will be around keeping members informed of what opportunities are created for local authority/social housing customers by fluctuations in these funding markets. In case you were not aware, there has been recent volatility with Green Deal Cashback and Home Improvement Funds that has left many landlords frozen or behind on insulation/carbon reduction programmes. I have shared that update today to help redraw focus onto the easy wins that can be delivered in the interim before the funding is revised and changed once more. I would add that last year's changes to ECO in December were devastating to the industry and so the incentive here is capitalising now on something which costs you nothing to deliver.

I would close by asking you to please keep in mind that feedback from other members indicates many feel unsupported in their role or are juggling other duties. For them, posts like this continue to be insightful by helping draw attention to things worthy of attention.

Thoughts, Comments, Debate welcomed!

All the best,

John