We remain committed to helping our most vulnerable customers. From 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2010, we spent over £20m on our social programme, the equivalent of £2.81 per customer account as demonstrated in the Ofgem report ‘Monitoring suppliers’ social programmes 2009-10. We’ve committed to spend at least £59 million over the three-year period of our current social programme on a number of key initiatives.
In 2010, we started the fourth year of our CaringEnergy scheme, designed to help improve the warmth, energy efficiency and income of vulnerable households. This year, we’ve given advice to over 21,000 people, including 712 successful benefit entitlement checks. We estimate that the average successful application will provide those households with an additional £2,397 a year. Of the customers we spoke to, more than 1,548 were also eligible to join our Priority Service Register.
Our CaringEnergy Fund provided 373 people with a total of £374,321 from 1 April 2009 to 31 March 2010, at an average grant of £1,004 per person. Of these, 62 people had new or replacement heating systems (£205,049) and 320 had replacement A-rated appliances (£169,272). Additionally, 42 customers received top-up grants from our fund through the Government’s Warm Front scheme (£23,300)
In 2009 we sponsored the “Diagnosing Warmth” project run by National Energy Action to help promote referrals to our CaringEnergy Fund. The project focused on training front line health and social workers in Nottingham city on energy efficiency and the assistance available to help fuel poor customers. The project helped us understand best practice in generating referrals and we are considering how to take these learnings forward in future.
We launched our WarmAssist offering at the end of 2008 and added our Prepayment WarmAssist at the start of 2009. By the end of 2010, we had 25,781 customers on one of our WarmAssist products. We also widened our eligibility criteria during 2009 and so we can now offer these discounted prices to customers over the age of 60 who receive the Disability Living Allowance or Attendance Allowance. In October and November 2010 we wrote to over 93,000 existing customers who we felt may be eligible for our WarmAssist product urging them to contact us and sign up for WarmAssist before winter.
We were actively involved in a number of industry initiatives in 2010, including investing in the Home Heat Helpline. We received 1,118 referrals from the helpline from vulnerable customers seeking advice. We were also involved in the Scottish Government’s Energy Assistance Package Scheme, offering tariff advice to 681 customers.
We also sponsored National Energy Action's Fuel Poverty Forums in the East Midlands and Eastern Regions. These forums examine policy and practical initiatives relating to fuel poverty and deliver energy efficiency solutions at a local, regional and national level. We helped to fund the Energy Best Deal campaign, delivered by Citizens Advice Bureau and other organisations. The Energy Best Deal campaign saw 371 advice sessions held across England and Wales, aimed at customers most likely to fall into fuel poverty such as pensioners and those on low incomes. Other sessions were aimed at frontline workers and volunteers who work with these groups.