Tackling Fuel Poverty in the North East

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Tackling Fuel Poverty in the North East

• Graeme Oram
• Chief Executive, Five Lamps

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Welcome
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Five Lamps

• Over 26 years of Making People Matter
• Mission To transform lives, raise aspirations,
  remove barriers and offer choice
• Values Making People Matter Service Matters
  Performance Matters Informed Choices Share
  Success Make Communities Matter
• Vision Creating Possibilities Improving Lives
• Integrated service portfolio
• Financial Inclusion
• Youth Services
• Enterprise
• Employability
• Unique model of delivery - Whole family
  approach

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Financial Exclusion

• Financial Exclusion is the closest proxy to
  poverty
• North East - 1million people (nearly 50 of the
  working age population) without savings accounts
  and almost 500,000 people (and increasing) who
  have no current account
• 10 12M UK adults in the non-standard credit
  market
• 2.5M to 3M using home collected credit (aka
  doorstep lending)
• 25 to 30M issued through home collected credit
  every week
• Dramatic increase in the number of high interest
  loan companies on the high street, online and the
  doorstep market
• 5 of the 13 red areas which have the greatest
  mismatch between supply and demand for affordable
  credit
• Financial exclusion is a barrier to social and
  economic inclusion
• Financial Inclusion through targeted support and
  building capacity
• Affordable credit for all
• Savings
• Access to mainstream services

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Financial InclusionAim To provide affordable
credit and financial support to financially
excluded individuals across the North East,
enabling them to move away from their reliance on
unaffordable or illegal credit

• Personal lending
• 21,378 unsecured personal loans to financially
  excluded individuals
• Personal financial advice to over 26,000
  financially excluded individuals
• 6,626,875 lending activity
• Helping Hands
• 280 loans to financially excluded homeowners
  (average loan 9,082.50)
• 5,459,323 loan scheme
• Energy Debt Advice
• Contract awarded through British Gas Energy Trust
  to provide energy efficiency and debt advice to
  400 individuals
• Stockton Council Warm Homes Healthy People
• Capacity Builders
• Workshops to over 1,500 financially excluded
  individuals
• Pre-release prisoners at HMP Kirklevington Grange

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Key initiatives

• NESTA Twenty Catalytic Investments to Grow the
  Social Investment Market
• Great North Loan Fund
• To continue the growth of our regional financial
  inclusion initiative towards our target of a 20m
  multi-faceted loan fund by 2015, delivering
  50,000 personal loans per annum
• Social Investment Bond
• To secure large-scale social investment issuing a
  prospectus in March 2012 for a listed bond on the
  Luxemburg Bond Exchange
• Note Programme will seek to raise up to
  20million over the next few years. The initial
  prospectus will seek to attract investment across
  three specific tranches
• Financial Inclusion to enable further growth in
  our personal lending activity
• Empty Homes to act as a catalyst in a
  substantial 10 year initiative bringing up to
  5,000 currently empty properties back into
  productive use
• Helping Hand the conversion of the current fund
  into a 20year bond as a cornerstone for future
  investment
• Measuring our Impact
• Sector leading social impact measurement building
  on nationally-recognised 2010 Social Accounts

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Tackling fuel poverty in the North East

• Our financial exclusion customers are

Personal Lending Energy Debt Helping Hands
Female 71 70 49
30 years and under 49 49 7
31 64 years 46 42 57
Elderly (65 ) 5 9 36
Unemployed 75 70 21
Local Authority or Housing Association rented accommodation 55 60 -
Single parents 44 26 16
Previously accessed Social Fund 74 17 -
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Energy Debt Advice - Customers

• Grant applications to Utility Trusts
• 10 dont respond they want help but wont
  engage
• 15 multiple debts Debt Relief Orders/
  Bankruptcy
• 20 switching advice
• 25 eligible for Warm Homes Discount
• Referrals for additional support
• British Gas Further Assistance Payments
• GO-WARM/ Health through Warmth Replacement
  boilers
• 5 referred for specialist benefits advice
• 3 people referred to Christians Against Poverty
  food
• Warm Zone for external cladding
• Unemployed fathers
• Elderly 90 of over 60s are worried about
  rising fuel bills
• 25 of people are entitled to Warm Homes Discount
  
• UK Government Statutory obligation to eliminate
  fuel poverty by 2016

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Case Study Newcastle Customer

• Mark from Newcastle
• Wife, 3 children and 1 on the way
• Baby was born with very little kidney function
  dialysis
• Mark struggled with 14 hour days he was working
  new job at British Heart Foundation
• Babys life threatening condition means she needs
  a constant temperature in her room
• Linda Evans advice on managing on a reduced
  income, energy efficiency and British Gas Energy
  Trust grant
• New boiler British Gas Energy Trust Further
  Assistance Payment and Newcastle Councils
  Health Through Warmth project (Energy Savings
  Trust referral)

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Tackling Fuel Poverty in the North East

• Strategic Priority Building Brilliant
  Partnerships
• Multi-agency approach
• Referral to energydebt_at_fivelamps.org.uk or
  [phone]
• Questions?