Last winter (2022-23) saw the highest energy prices in living memory, fuel poverty in the UK affected an estimated 6.3 million households. The issues with soaring household energy prices, due to a variety of global and national pressures, saw the government step in and support all households with a domestic electricity connection with £400 support.

Connecting Communities in Berkshire (CCB) has been running a dedicated project to help people in need of extra energy advice and support for over 10 years now. In its current format, this project delivers advice and guidance on reducing home energy costs to low-income families in Berkshire, and the front-line workers who support them.

From April 2022- March 23 this project attracted funding from The National Lottery Community Funds Awards for All programme, Berkshire Community Foundation, St James’s Place Charitable Foundation, The Arnold Clark Community Fund, and support funding from DEFRA.

Over Covid lockdowns the project expanded from purely face-to-face support targeted delivery to offering a telephone advice service and, unsurprisingly, referrals and demand for this support continued to grow last winter as more and more families struggled with the cost-of-living crisis.

The complexity of the issues that Helen Dean, our Project Manager on this project, faced expanded. Helen explains; “This year saw both the telephone advice and bespoke advice to families take longer as there were many more issues to discuss. Switching suppliers and saving money that way was not an option, so I assisted families instead by offering tailored advice on reducing their energy and water usage at home, and ensuring they were claiming maximum water discounts. I also gave them calm, focused support to help them gain confidence in their abilities to tackle and resolve issues with their supplier around utility debt.

Issues around water, energy and other bills can seriously impact someone’s mental and physical wellbeing as families often had cold homes, and worried about how they could pay the bills which are so high. After receiving advice the families I spoke to found that they were better equipped to tackle their financial issues, their stress reduced, and they understood that small savings can all add up to bigger wins.”

Families such as Chelsea, from West Berkshire; “I was extremely anxious and worried about my situation until I spoke to Helen, the worry around this had been heightened by my depression. After the conversations with Helen, I feel much more comfortable in contacting people, I have a list of ‘to dos’ which makes me feel that I am doing something and it will make a difference. Thanks to Helen’s knowledge I am feeling positive going forward and she has helped me form an ongoing plan for the future.”

Georgia from East Berkshire also received bespoke telephone advice she said “Before I spoke to Helen I was drained, worried and stressed about my bills. Helen provided a lot of helpful information and support with our bills, I can now take action on some of the things Helen suggested and feel more settled knowing there is help out there for us.”

Helen works closely with practitioners across Berkshire to ensure that those that need her support have access to it. In the last year she ran 17 drop-in sessions at the groups listed below, reaching 96 families of which 89% defined themselves as being in fuel poverty;

Feedback from families attending the sessions was really positive too;

“Absolutely brilliant: articulate, friendly, digestible, and also interactive. Very informative too. Thank you Helen!” Corn Exchange attendee

Another key part of Helen’s project is to deliver training to practitioners and frontline workers who could then share their knowledge with the families they support directly, two of these sessions were also partially funded by West Berkshire Council Adult Community Learning.

Eight training sessions in total were delivered to social workers, family support workers, social prescribers, support workers for families with complex needs, foodbank volunteers and Berkshire Homestart staff & volunteers. In total 120 practitioners were trained who stated that they could cascade the information to an estimated 3843 families across the county in the 6 months following the training. This is the greatest impact through training we have achieved in a project year!

“Invaluable information that I can impart immediately. I couldn’t be happier, an excellent course. All 8 of my team that attended were inspired and feel a lot more confident to support our clients – thank you.” Fran Cummings West Berks Foodbank Manager.

“Very useful training, thank you so much, will use with all the families I help in future” Anne, Family Support Worker Windsor and Maidenhead Family Friends.