Energy Savings Trust blocks help for homeowners on EPCs - Homes Matter

Energy Savings Trust (EST) has blocked publication of an article designed to encourage conveyancing solicitors to help clients improve the energy efficiency of their homes.

Conveyancers are ideally placed to refer homeowners with Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) to insulation installers for help and advice. However, they are not currently doing this.

In November 2009, I therefore arranged for the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the National Insulation Association to meet with the Law Society which resulted in the latter agreeing to include articles related to EPCs in various member publications and on their website.

DECC wanted EST to draft the article and I therefore arranged for EST to meet with editorial staff at the Law Society to discuss this. However, the draft was prepared too late by them to meet the Law Society's January publication deadline and had to be rewritten as it made no mention of the benefits to conveyancing solicitors of promoting action on EPCs.

Prevarification by EST then led to further publication deadlines being missed, the stumbling blocks being that they do not have a telephone number for "trade" to call and did not want to allocate any staff to deal with queries or to follow up with homeowners.

To solve these problems, I therefore offered to do this work for them on an a voluntary, unpaid basis. However, EST declined my offer and have now advised they will not go ahead with publication of the article because I have been critical of them.

In my view, their decision is inexplicable. My criticism of them should not have gotten in the way. Did they expect praise for their dithering over 6 months? Homeowners should come first but their decision is clearly not in the best interests of 4 million homeowners with EPCs or the environment and flies in the face of Government's wish to see action on EPCs.

It is also contrary to EST's own declared policy of wanting to establish partnerships with organisations in the private sector and is a snub to the Law Society. Their dithering resulted in three publication deadlines being missed and an opportunity lost to secure the help of conveyancers on EPCs during the busy home selling and buying season. Can any reader tell me how their decision can be justified?

Has Energy Savings Trust passed it's sell by date?

Once slated as one of Britain's nine worst quangos, EST costs taxpayers' over £40 million a year to run - money which its critics say, could be far better spent.

Since 1993, I estimate it has received over £400 million of taxpayers' money. However, their marketing / communication strategy has not worked and there are numerous examples of taxpayers' money being wasted including banned advertising and the ' Crowning of the Green Queen'.

And, despite the need to cutback public spending, they continue to recruit staff with titles such as Data Management Assistant, Assistant Data Services Manager, Assistant Information and Data Manager and Compliance Administrator at an estimated cost to taxpayers of over £400,000 p.a. The mind boggles as to what these staff will do.

Many organizations and consultants in the public and private sector now provide the services that EST was set up to provide and many stakeholders including energy suppliers and insulation installers have concerns on it's performance. Questions that therefore need to be asked include:

Is EST providing good value for taxpayers' money?
Is there any need for them to continue to provide advice services to consumers?
Could services they provide be better supplied by the private or voluntary sectors?
Does EST's impartiality get in the way of providing good service?
Should EST be merged with other 'green' quangos?

Comments

written on 16-Jun-2010
Ian Cox says:
http://www.thelawforum.co.uk/energy-saving-tr ... -epcs
written on 18-Jun-2010
Phil Neale [http://www.actonyourco2.co.uk] says:
I read your article with an increasing smile as I got further into it. The very plain simple truth is that the EST run a program of regional advice centres around the country which are not working. Their head of advice came to Dorset back in November last year and in a presentation to councils and other stakeholders proudly announced that of the 1.5 million clients who contacted the advice line 150k were signposted to grants for measures. Only 27% took up the grants and 27% of all the clients calling the regional service were dissatisfied with the service. That's a lot of people who took a call to action, made a decision to make a difference, will now probably never bother again. Damaging for EST and way more importantly damaging for the rest of the energy advice industry that's independent and working very well.

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© Homes Matter, February 2010.