We are delighted to announce that our home energy team has secured more funding from the Energy Saving Trust as part of round 10 of the Energy Redress funding.

What this means in practise is that two of our projects, Cold to Cosy Homes and Retrofit for Cumbria, will be expanding their scope to serve more people in the county in improving energy efficiency.

First of all, Cold to Cosy Homes will be taking on some new staff and extending the services it offers to parts of Cumbria that the popular service has yet to extensively reach.

This means:

  • 3400 energy advice interactions via visits or enquiries that are free, impartial and high quality across Barrow, Allerdale and Copeland. The authorities in these districts are strongly backing this application to work with us on strategy, communications and referrals.
  • 1000 visits (in-person or virtual) will be carried out with energy saving measures installed in 90% of households -leading to warmer, healthier homes and residents, reductions in excess winter deaths, helping tackle affordability and the climate emergency directly.
  • A wide network of professional installers of energy saving measures will be developed to provide appropriate households with wide range of high quality / durable measures.
  • An expanded, active network of energy champions, recruited, trained and active in their work or community, providing energy advice and referring clients directly.
  • Further education of residents on how to keep warm, save energy and deal with dampness issues, helping them to make further changes and improvements themselves. This will lead to further improved health and well-being associated with improved warmth and comfort.
  • Residents being able to access additional funding for energy improvements (especially with our strong links and cross referral mechanisms with all local authorities).
  • An improved Cumbria wide home energy advice service, with a strong and recognised brand and a solid reputation for quality advice and tackling fuel poverty for many of the most vulnerable households. In the longer term, this will significantly improve our capacity, further streamlining processes and improving client services.

Our Energy Efficiency Project Manager Andrew Northcott said: “Its superb news to hear about this new significant funding for Cold to Cosy Homes. It means we can substantially expand our scheme and help many people with fuel costs, winter warmth, advice on grants and help reduce carbon. We can now also provide the service widely to all districts of Cumbria, now including Barrow, Allerdale and Copeland.”

In addition, Retrofit for Cumbria has also been graced with additional funding which will allow the project to develop a service, alongside Carbon Co-Op. URBED and key local communities, that supports householder centred energy retrofit.

This service will be built on the findings of the Manchester based People Powered Retrofit project, undertaking research and establishing the systems, training and processes necessary to have:

  • An economically sustainable one-stop shop retrofit service in Cumbria.
  • Sufficient skilled contractors to provide quality deep retrofit measures in a wide variety of building types.
  • Increased householder confidence, trust and satisfaction in the local supply chain.
  • Unlocked £1.4million of spend on retrofit in Cumbria.