Memorandum submitted by Kirklees Council,
Kirklees Energy Services and Kirklees Warm Zone (EEFP 47)
BACKGROUND
Kirklees Council has a Green Ambition, which
is "To be a beacon of green living in the UK and at a European
level and to mainstream sustainability into decision-making".
This is a clear statement from Kirklees Council to its partners
and the residents of Kirklees that it takes the environment and
climate change seriously. The above ambition is being delivered
through both an external and internal work programme.
Since the early 1990's Kirklees Council has
taken a lead at a local, regional, and national level on issues
relating to the environment and energy. Some notable work undertaken
or supported by the council includes:
— A Renewable Energy Fund—which
has enabled around £4 million of additional funding from
the EU, UK Government and private investment to be brought into
Kirklees. A sustainability Fund has also been set up to fund emissions
reduction initiatives in council projects.
— One of the largest local authority
solar energy projects in the UK (Suncities) involving 500 households,
resulting in 5% of the total UK photo-electric generation in 2006.
Six Council care homes and three local schools also have solar
panels.
— Demonstration wind turbine projects
on council buildings—including the first two 6kW wind turbines
ever installed on the roof of a council building in the UK, and
two 15kW wind turbines at the corporate training centre.
— Funding Climate Champions project
in Kirklees schools, as a result one school installed their own
15kW wind turbine.
— 220 solar electricity panels and
48m2 of solar thermal panels on Civic Centre III.
— In 2009 Kirklees Council will begin
installing intelligent metering into 100 of its buildings, including
schools.
— Sustainable building policy implemented
in 2008. All new council buildings to achieve an energy performance
at least 30% beyond current Building Regulations and achieve BREEAM
Excellent or Very Good.
— A carbon budget as part of the annual
finance budget round has been introduced across the council, to
drive down emissions.
— Under a successful housing PFI bid
the authority will deliver 550 units of new domestic build in
partnership with a social housing provider. Build commences in
2009 and all homes in accordance with the authority's policy will
be delivered to level 4+ of the code for sustainable homes.
— Since April 2007 Kirklees Council
has waived the fee charged for planning applications for any form
of renewable energy technology.
— The only UK council to be a member
of the UK Emissions Trading Scheme.
— The Council has been registered to
EMAS since 2000, which means our building energy use and associated
CO2 figures are externally verified on an annual basis.
As a result of the energy and environment work
carried out over the last eighteen years Kirklees Council is recognised
as being one of the leading national and European local authorities
in the energy and environment field leading to a number of prestigious
awards.
BACKGROUND TO
THE KIRKLEES
WARM ZONE
Kirklees Warm Zone, is a 3 year project which
began in February 2007, it is the only Kirklees Council backed
insulation project working within the area, it has cross political
party support and is plays a key role in delivering Kirklees Council's
Green Ambition*.
The main aims of Kirklees Warm Zone are to:
— Increase the energy efficiency of
local housing stock—increase the average SAP of 51 to 65
in the private sector (average SAP of social stock is now 75 after
the Decent Homes investment).
— Reduce carbon emissions.
— Improve the health and wellbeing
of Kirklees residents.
Kirklees Warm Zone is unique in many aspects,
namely as it is the only scheme offering free Cavity Wall and
Loft Insulation to all 171,000 households irrespective of income
within the local authority area. This is fundamentally different
to previous area based schemes that were only free to priority
customers. Currently it is the largest UK scheme of its kind,
the Council committed a total budget of £9.9m and Scottish
Power agreed CERT funding of £11.1m. Authors are aware that
Sheffield City Council will be launching their free scheme in
the New Year, significant support has been provided by the authors
to Sheffield City Council during the development process.
Each household will be offered:
— cavity Wall Insulation, using Whitewool/Rockwool.
We provide each householder with a 25 year CIGA guarantee against
their cavity wall insulation;
— loft insulation, up to 300mm;
— a carbon monoxide detector;
— 4 low energy light bulbs; and
— loft and eave access where required.
A range of additional services are offered from
the following partners:
— Through the Energy Saving Trust all
householders are offered a free home energy advice pack, by completing
a home energy check form, which is integral to the Kirklees Warm
Zone assessment form.
— Kirklees Energy Services (KES) are
the managing agent for Kirklees Warm Zone and other schemes, thereby
offering householders the opportunity to be screened for:
— Central heating systems;
— Renewable technologies;
— Measures for Hard to Treat properties;
and
— Direct referral into the Warm
Front scheme;
— Miller Pattison is the only contractor
working for Kirklees Warm Zone. Through this partnership Miller
Pattison have been able to develop a local depot and training
centre within Kirklees to recruit and train local surveyors and
installers.
— Citizens Advice Bureau, The Pensions
Service, Revenues and Benefits and Kirklees Benefits Advice Service
work in partnership to offer benefit entitlement checks and/or
debt advice.
— West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service
offer a home fire safety check.
— Yorkshire Water offer domestic water
conservation advice.
— The Carers Gateway offer support
for people who care for friends or family.
— Kirklees Council's Private sector
housing unit offer free advice and equity loans for properties
that do not meet the Housing and health fitness ratings.
Kirklees Warm Zone will visit all 171,000 homes
on a ward by ward basis by autumn 2009 with a nine month mop-up
exercise until it finishes on the 30th June 2010. Starting in
February 2007 as of November 2008, Kirklees Warm Zone has visited
15 out of the 23 wards and completed over 61,000 household assessments,
knocking on 99,630 doors.
By summer 2010 it is estimated that approximately
53,000 lofts will have been brought up to 300mm, and 35,000 cavity
walls will have been filled, with emissions being reduced by 55,000
tonnes in the first 3 years.
KIRKLEES WARM
ZONE JUSTIFICATION
Many householders who fit an "able to pay"
category still remain un-insulated/under-insulated regardless
of marketing campaigns or reduced price insulation offers. The
Kirklees Warm Zone message of "don't come to us, we will
come to you" drives the project forward and throughout extensive
marketing campaigns, advertising and public relations is able
to engage and motivate all householders, priority or able to pay
to take up the offer of free insulation (to date, invoiced jobs
show an 81% ATP, 19% Priority split).
By going ward by ward, street by street, house
by house the cost of insulation can be significantly driven down.
Contractors working on area based initiatives are given a guarantee
of a set amount of work over a given period of time, which all
supports long-term viability and provides economies of scale which
you do not achieve through a targeted approach. Authors estimate
that between 10-20% efficiency saving can be achieved for the
public purse. Furthermore, an area based universal scheme acknowledges
that the UK housing stock is still thermally inefficient compared
to northern European neighbours, and only by improving the housing
stock universally will the UK be-able to tackle and reduce the
incidence of fuel poverty and climate change emissions.
The free insulation offer also contains a number
of significant benefits to the local authority, residents and
businesses of the borough, as follows.
— Economic—The installation of
cavity wall and loft insulation is estimated to reduce the fuel
bill by around £100 per measure. Based upon that rough estimate
the Kirklees Warm Zone has installed at the end of November 2008
6,763 cavity wall and 15,828 loft insulations resulting in a £2¼M/pa
reduction in fuel bills at a cost of £5/M capital spend thereby
paying for its self in two years.
— Bureaucracy—The cost of bureaucracy
is reduced by not having any criteria or means testing. A rhetorical
question is; what is the point of going to all that bother to
recover £100 for loft or cavity wall installation?
— Reduced confusion—The free
for all offering back by Kirklees Council brings significant benefits
for community cohesion, reducing confusion in householders' minds
(which exists with current schemes) and inertia, thereby increasing
penetration of the scheme. The current final figure for households
to have completed an assessment form is 74.5% at the end of the
scheme based upon the Zone meeting future monthly assessment forecast
totals than is currently being meet. Authors envisage that the
penetration figure will be above 80%.
RECENT FIGURES AS OF NOVEMBER 2008
Referral
| % referral based on 59,413 completed assessments
|
Miller Pattisons for FREE Insulation
| 82% |
| Benefits check/debt advice* | 15%
|
| Carbon Monoxide Detector | 93%
|
| Low Energy Light bulbs | 86%
|
| Water Conservation Information | 18%
|
| Home Fire Safety Check | 22%
|
| Carers Gateway | 3% |
*The average annual increase per new benefit claimant via Kirklees Warm Zone is £1,556 pa
| |
OTHER QUESTIONS
Hard to Treat Properties
Currently there is a small budget of £150k to provide
specific measures to those properties termed Hard to Treat, in
the Kirklees district, however it is recognised that this is quite
a significant issue and close partnership work with a range of
partners will provide opportunity to apply for further funding,
it is anticipated that the funding stream will increase.
The criteria for the scheme are quite specific:
The applicant must be a private householder in receipt of
means tested benefit or who can be demonstrated to be suffering
fuel poverty with household saving of less than £16,000 and
living in a property that is Hard to Treat with a SAP rating of
less than 40.
KIRKLEES NEIGHBOURHOOD
HOUSING—SOCIAL
STOCK
There has been significant insulation and heating investment
as part of the Decent Homes work by Kirklees Neighbourhood Housing
over the last 10 to 15 years. Kirklees Neighbourhood Housing (which
is an arms length management organisation, wholly owned by the
Council) and a local housing association have also installed a
range of micro generation technologies since 2000, such as solar
PV; air sourced heat pumps and solar thermal.
RE-CHARGE
The Re-Charge scheme builds on previous projects and aims
to further increase the number of micro generation installations
in local housing. Re-Charge offers homeowners in Kirklees an interest-free
loan of up to £10,000 to install renewable or low carbon
technologies on their property. The loan is secured to the property
by a "second charge" and is repaid when the property
changes ownership, the Council pays the interest in the intervening
years. By removing up-front costs, this innovative funding model
encourages more people to install renewable energy systems.
£3 million has been allocated to the scheme by the Council
over the next 3 years it is estimated that this will benefit around
330 households. Up to 10% of the funds have been ring-fenced to
support households in fuel poverty who cannot afford to heat their
homes properly.
The Re-Charge scheme is the first of its kind in the country
and has received significant interest at a national level.
In terms of householder interest in the Recharge scheme,
there has been significant interest resulting in the first two
years worth on money being allocated from only one small article
in the free Council newspaper.
KIRKLEES RE-CHARGE
BREAKDOWN YEAR
1
These figures are up until November 2008.
Total number of applications: 182.
Total number of household surveys to date: 71.
| Technologies | Households
|
| PV and Thermal (joint) | 17
|
| Solar Thermal | 7 |
| Ground Source | 2 |
| Biomass | 2 |
| PV | 43 |
| Total | 71 |
| |
Installation of the first systems will take place in January
in addition to the above figures there are seven wind turbine
(6kW) and one micro-hydro installations to be funded out of year
two money.
Please refer to the local government publication "an
energy generating democracy—developing successful low carbon
economies" for how a £1b national scheme based upon
the recharge approach would start to transform the micro-generation
industry.
SOURCE OF
MONEY
It should be noted that Kirklees Council sourced no special
funding. As a well managed excellent council, Kirklees has power
to invest to save and can source capital funds in the order of
several million—this is quite normal for example for regeneration
schemes.
At a political level the Kirklees Warm Zone process was unusual
in that Kirklees Council is a hung council. This led to competition
between the political Parties who all wanted to improve the scheme
and its area wide benefits (i.e. benefiting all Wards). Resulting
in additional funding being found in a series of private budget
negotiations to eventually enable the scheme to be free at the
point of delivery.
Three Parties: Green, Lib Dem, Conservative were involved
in these discussions with the Labour party influence being, other
private bi Party discussions.
The nature of this political process is perhaps unique—but
all Parties were convinced strongly of the wide benefits of the
WZ total district approach with no means testing. So why did all
the Parties want to support WZ so strongly?
Kirklees Warm Zone is unusual in that it offers something
akin to a council tax benefit/rebate for up to 2/3 of residents—so
the majority will benefit in comfort and financial terms receiving
a service of value up to £350 per home. Any Party that is
associated strongly with Kirklees Warm Zone thus has a scheme
with considerable vote winning potential.
PRIVATE THOUGHT
The committee are obviously aware of the impending challenges
of climate change from both an adaption and mitigation perspective
and recent scientific papers in the summer regarding that immediate
action is required. Authors of this submission to the committee
are categorically convinced that a free door to door scheme should
be implemented immediately for the UK to be completed by the end
of the financial year 2012-13.
No other approach will bring immediate cost effective benefits
in terms of emission reduction, increased affordable warmth, job
creation, reduced health impact, economic benefit and total UK
wide citizen engagement on the issue of climate change.
January 2009
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