If Government is to meet it's domestic carbon reduction targets then every UK business has to play it's part in promoting the benefits of energy efficiency to customers and employees. 

However, instead of encouraging businesses to do this through partnerships with local councils and energy suppliers, Labour has relied on a few proactive councils, volunteers in small scale local community programmes and the work of environmentalists to generate demand.

As a result:  

• most council energy efficiency programmes are operating without the help of consumer facing organisations such as retailers, supermarkets, banks and estate agents.
• only a handful of companies have established insulation referral schemes for customers and employees eg Tesco and Marks and Spencer.
• Most companies are only looking to reduce their own carbon emissions. In London for example, only one of the Green 500 businesses is promoting energy efficiency to customers and employees. 
• Only 200 of 2 million businesses are members of Energy Efficiency Partnership for Homes, despite membership being free.
• No banks or building societies are in the PAYS pilots

And now Labour intends to unfairly placed responsibility on councils to lead delivery at a time when councils are under severe pressure to cut back spending. 

Will therefore Labour's public sector led, HEMS work? I think not.

 Whilst councils are clearly in an excellent position to improve social housing and reduce fuel poverty, their willingness and ability to improve private housing has to be questioned and there are already worrying signs:

 Improving private housing is low priority for Councils
Quite rightly, councils top priority is to improve social housing and reduce fuel poverty so although private housing accounts for 80% of carbon emissions, it is exceedingly unlikely that improving private homes will be a political priority at a local level.

 Councils lack confidence to deliver
According to recent research, most councils lack confidence to deliver carbon emissions reductions. Reasons given include having other priorities that were more important such as maintaining front line services and wanting to get their own house in order first. In this context, only 2/3^rd  of  Local Authorities have adopted NI 186. (In London, only 18 out of 33 boroughs).  

 Councils do not have the necessary in-house skills or resources
Most councils have outsourced or intend to outsource responsibility to third party delivery agents for marketing and home energy adviser (HEA) recruitment. For most councils, their only involvement will therefore be in product procurement and "lending" their name to marketing material. 

 The success of energy efficiency programmes will therefore largely depend not on the councils themselves but on the performance of their appointed delivery agents and the quality of HEAs they recruit.

 Many delivery agents are small, non - profit making organisations with limited financial resources and new ones are springing up to take advantage of opportunities that will arise through CESP, HEMS and PAYS etc. None are regulated and as council programmes roll out there will be a growing risk that some delivery agents will not be able to perform as resources become stretched. This would result in complaints increasing, resident's trust in Councils being undermined and energy efficiency programmes failing.

 Worryingly, some councils have already appointed agents on a "permanent" basis without any performance targets / low uptake penalties or review dates built into their contracts. Some delivery agents in London for example, are installing measures at the request of tenants without prior approval from landlords.  

 Most council backed projects have uptake rates of less than 30%
Reasons for the low uptake include: 

• Councils being handicapped by lack of access to the EPC registry and HEED data to help identify target areas.
• HEAs not having the necessary "sales" and communication skills.
• Most door knocking is on a cold call basis with few pre-booked appointments arranged.  
• HEAs are expected to gain homeowners permission to carry out energy audits at the time they door knock. Audits can take up to two hours and not surprisingly most homeowners are not receptive to this without pre-agreement.
• Most homeowners are out during the day and are not receptive to unsolicited visits during evenings and weekends.
• Local businesses and community groups have not been pre-engaged to publicise programmes

Home Energy Advisers are being poorly trained
Under HEMs, a huge and unfair responsibility is to be placed on HEAs to deliver energy efficiency. Though door knocking on a street by street basis often on a cold call basis, they will be required to carry out home energy audits, persuade homeowners to install insulation, advise on adopting low carbon lifestyles, encourage owners to reduce waste and even carry out benefit entitlement checks. However:    

• The current National Occupation Standard (NOS) has no "sales-skills" training module.
• Some delivery agents are hiring unemployed people with inadequate skills on a self-employed basis with pay linked to the number of visits not uptake of measures.
• Some vacancies are being advertised without any requirement for City or Guilds / DEA qualification or minimum standards of attire.
• The salaries offered (£16K-£22K in London) have not attracted the best quality candidates.

And, training companies are champing at the bit to offer courses. Are we to see what unfortunately happened to Domestic Energy Assessors, repeated?

Lack of corporate partnerships
Delivery agents by their own admission have failed to engage local businesses to promote council backed programmes. In any event, decisions by large businesses on their involvement are made at head office or regional office level so it is difficult for councils or their delivery agents to secure local bilateral agreements.

Businesses find it difficult to access information about council delivery plans and locate the most appropriate officers to talk to.  Few council run programmes have private sector representation on their boards and as a result, there is no "independent voice from the outside world" to provide commercial expertise or help ensure programmes provide good value for taxpayers' money.

So, what is the solution? Unfortunately, there is no easy answer.

Creating a critical mass of energy efficient homes will not happen just because Government says it will. A public sector led strategy will not work. Taxpayers will demand good value for their money and councils will not be able to guarantee this with only the help of energy suppliers. We must persuade other private sector companies to work with councils and I propose the next Government consider the following steps to help overstretched councils out: 

 Establish a national corporate engagement programme

In particular, there is an urgent need for Government to engage large consumer-facing organizations with high footfall e.g shopping centre owners, supermarkets; retailers; banks, estate agents and building societies. Even the large football clubs.

 To achieve this, it is proposed a small team of experienced sales professionals be recruited by Energy Savings Trust to arrange meetings with the CEOs of the UK's top 1000 companies in order to secure their agreement to promote energy efficiency to customers and employees. Options to be considered should include:    

• Energy Savings Trust establishing a national insulation referral programme
• Individual companies or trade associations establishing referral programmes
  Local support being provided to council schemes by corporate branches displaying marketing material, donating products and sponsoring events. 

Support and commitment by large corporates will provide much needed publicity for council backed schemes and 'kickstart' improved response. They will also provide the innovation, diversity and competition needed to stimulate growth in 'green' services and leadership for other businesses to follow.

 In this context, it is particularly important to persuade banks and retailers to become involved at an early stage as they will ultimately be required to provide loans for more expensive measures such as solid wall insulation.

I have previously proposed that such a programme be established without success.

 Rethink HEA training
Like every other product / service, energy efficiency needs to be "sold" to consumers and every commercial organisation knows that top quality sales staff are required to be successful, not mediocre ones. Thus:  

• Domestic Energy Assessors with proven sales consultancy and communication skills need to be retrained as HEAs not unemployed or people on apprentice schemes.
• A sales module needs to be included in NOS
• Salaries on offer need to be increased to attract the best quality candidates
• telesales staff needed to pre-book appointments for HEAs as much as possible. 

Of course this will increase staffing costs but the risk is that if delivery agents don't do this, council programmes will end up as an expensive failure at taxpayers' expense and carbon reduction targets will not be met. 

 Other measures

•  Annual reviews of delivery agents' capabilities to ensure uptake is maximized.   Reviews should include an assessment of delivery agents' management, financials, HEA recruitment policy and performance. Councils should only grant one year? contracts and build in penalties for low uptake.  
   
• A national code of practice should be established to minimize risk of consumer complaints to which all councils and their delivery agents are required to comply. This should include a door- knocking protocol and complaints procedure. Standardised data collection procedures and homeowner questionnaires should also be introduced. Councils / delivery agents should be requested to always obtain landlord approval before HEAs carry out any work.   
   
• Further "pressure" needs to be put on Government to release EPC Registry / HEED data to councils and to leverage use of EPC comparison data from external data providers.

 Next, Labour's £250 million Energy Performance Certificate Scam.....