Birmingham Citizens Advice Bureau helps people to cut their fuel bills in Big Energy Week

As we are well aware through our work on the Final Demand Campaign, rising fuel bills are stretching household finances and people are looking for ways to save money on their energy bills. Supporter of our campaign, Birmingham Citizens Advice Bureau, is here to help.

They will give practical advice and help throughout Big Energy Week (16-21 January 2012) to help people cut their fuel bills and get all the financial support they are entitled to. They will also be putting on a special event at the Tyseley bureau on Thursday 19 January (09:30-18:30). Staff will be on hand to help people reduce their energy bills, and will be signposting those who qualify for additional support and home improvements.

Financial Inclusion Manager Florence Betts said: “More and more people are coming to us for advice on how to spend less on their fuel bills. Through Big Energy Week we want to tell people that help is at hand and that there are things they can do to cut their fuel bills.”

Birmingham Citizens Advice Bureau is urging people to speak to their energy supplier to check that they’re getting the best deal and are on the cheapest payment method - and to save energy by insulating your home – most energy companies are offering free and/or discounted insulation.

You could save more by switching energy suppliers and an accredited switching website can help you do this.

Plus it’s important to check that you are getting all of the benefits and tax credits that you’re entitled to – as you could be missing out on money that could make it easier to pay your fuel bill.

You can pick up a leaflet with tips and advice on cutting your fuel bills at Birmingham Citizens Advice Bureau.

Big Energy Week is an advice campaign coordinated by Citizens Advice to help consumers spend less on heating their home.

A new website – www.bigenergyweek.org.uk - is full of tips on how to cut your energy bills. And as part of Big Energy Week there will be events up and down the country where people can get practical advice on how they could spend less on heating their home.

We are also continuing to gather support for our campaign for a public enquiry into the power and influence of the ‘big six’ energy companies, to assess whether our current system is fit for purpose to deliver the clean, affordable and secure energy we need. You can sign the petition online here or on paper in the reception of our building.

Joe Peacock

Fuel Poverty in Birmingham

Yesterday I attended a meeting of different organisations from around Birmingham who are all concerned about the issue of Fuel Poverty and are looking for ways to work together to tackle it.

It was an eye-opening event for me and made me realise how important the work on cold homes we were doing for the energy bill campaign was. It also made me realise that we has missed an opportunity to engage with these people and get the kinds of stories we really needed to shock people into action while we were working on it.

We had various presentations throughout the morning, but the messages that came out were all the same, that this is a massive problem, which is only going to get worse unless some serious action is taken. The problem with Birmingham's housing stock is that many properties are "hard to treat" with effective insulation measures to ensure that they stop leaking heat and therefore wasting energy and money for the people paying the bills. According to Keith Budden (now of E-On), there are over 200 000 houses that need remedial work to make them energy efficient. That is a huge number, but it offers an opportunity to create employment while we remedy the situation as well as posing a problem of how to fund it.

Fuel poverty really does have a huge effect on people's lives. Physical and mental health declines in cold, damp homes with people getting respiratory problems that could last their whole lives, children's attainment at school being negatively affected and social lives destroyed through not having the possibility to invite guests round.

Green Doctor schemes of various types have managed to reach a few people and those that they have helped have really benefited, but the funding to these has now been cut and there is a real danger we could lose the expertise of those people if their work cannot be paid for. The Birmingham Energy Savers project is also having a substantial effect on those lucky enough to get solar panels installed through it, but compared to the scale of the problem - 20% or so of Birmingham's households are estimated to be fuel poor - this is still a small number and not the most vulnerable or poorest people, as the homes done already had a good standard of insulation.

The people I heard from who work for Birmingham Settlement and the Citizens Advice Bureau gave the starkest messages of the difficulties faced by the most vulnerable people. Those with fuel debt cannot switch tariff to a more suitable, many people cannot read their own meters and 90% of fuel poor people use electricity during the day, so should not be on tariffs such as economy 7 that are sold to them as being cheap. 60 000 people go to the CAB with debt problems in Birmingham and almost all of those are related to energy bills.

What came out of the day was a real willingness to start working together and form an affordable warmth action group similar to one we heard about in Walsall that has been really successful.

We need to get the NHS on board as well as energy providers and the city council. However, there was a desire that this would be led by the voluntary sector initially, due to their understanding of the issues.

Proposals such as the one from John Morris of LWM that home improvements should be available on prescription make a lot of sense, as it costs around £10K to treat chronic respiratory conditions each time a patient is admitted. We could do a lot to a home with a fraction of that amount, in terms of insulating it to make it warmer, so joining up these links and putting in early interventions is a crucial part to solving this as it is with many other environmental, health and social problems.

This wasn't just a talking shop, everyone came away with some things to do and we will be looking at helping to refresh the council's strategy for dealing with this problem through partnerships with everyone who is affected by the issue of fuel poverty (and that is a lot of different agencies).