Fuel Poverty Action

Trade body ADE established a Task Force last year to consider new proposals and principles for the District Heating industry.(i)  Their report Shared Warmth | A heat network market that benefits customers, investors, and the environment, came out today.(ii)
 

The Task Force of stakeholders acknowledged the need for regulation of the industry, since heat networks are monopolies, which “can lead to unreliable service, . . . poorly controlled and costly heating and . . . poor customer service”.

They recognised that for the industry to grow, “customers need to have a consistently good experience, fair and transparent pricing, and an assurance that when things do go wrong they will receive effective and fair redress.”

Yet they limited the scope of their recommendations to principles for future networks.  There are already some 17,000 heat networks in the UK, and while many function well, there are thousands of households in networks built over the past decade with private capital, where dysfunctional and unaffordable heating has made life a misery.(ii)

District Heating users were not invited to be part of the Task Force, but with Fuel Poverty Action a group of them, from four estates, brought their harsh experience to ADE director Tim Rotheray, in December.  They were thanked for their time, and told that their information would be helpful for the future, but that in their own situation nothing could be done.

Residents on such housing estates hope for the best for new developments, but as one says, “Whilst I appreciate many DH customers are reported as happy, that doesn’t mean we should be ignored, brushed to one side or forgotten.”

The nationwide survey “Heat Networks Consumer Survey” conducted by BEIS and published in December found that three quarters of heat network users are satisfied with their heating.  Fuel Poverty Action maintains that if, as claimed,  problematic networks are a minority, and standards are now improving, the industry as a whole bears a collective responsibility to bring all existing heat networks up to standard.  Ruth London comments:

Experience has shown that with expert intervention tariffs can be halved, and reliability greatly improved.  An industry-wide rescue plan for failing schemes would provide the consistency and certainty that the ADE Task Force says is essential for industry growth.  It would also ensure that the human guinea pigs in failed District Heating experiments get the redress they so desperately need, to keep warm.

The report’s only recommendation fo existing heat network customers is that a regulator should “eventually widen the scope” of a Supplier of Last Resort, to “include all heat networks”. The Supplier of Last Resort would step in when a heat network fails.  FPA believes that this basic protection, normal for essential services like energy or heat, should be extended to all immediately, and should apply when a network fails to fulfil its obligations to customers at an acceptable standard, as well as if it fails to meet its financial obligations.

 Ends.

(i)                  District Heating – like central heating for neighbourhoods, supplies heat to homes from a communal source, replacing gas boilers.  There are now about 17,000 such heat networks, but this is to expand massively in the next decade, with the help of £320 million of government money.  The industry is currently unregulated.

(ii)                https://www.theade.co.uk/resources/publications/shared-warmth-a-heat-network-market-that-benefits-customers-investors-and-t

(iii)               See for example our report of the network on Myatts Field North, in Lambeth here, and numerous  reports by Which? and Citizens Advice.

Last Thursday, Fuel Poverty Action hosted an evening of discussion about the cold, fear and poor living conditions faced by residents of many housing estates in the wake of Grenfell.

One of the star speakers at the event was Ishmael Francis-Murray, a resident of Lancaster West Estate, which sits in the shadow of Grenfell tower. He was a plasterer until the fire at Grenfell – the morning he watched friends die and family members fall apart. He was shocked by the inaction of government and the lack of support offered to children and the bereaved. “The kids who no-one seems to talk about are carrying really heavy burdens,” he said. “They’ve lost classmates and they’re not being given support.”

He has devoted the last 7 months to representing the views and rights of residents in the area, and has made a documentary series about the fallout from Grenfell called ‘Failed by the State’.

Ruth London, from FPA, said the very same penny pinching, cheating building practices, unaccountability and second rate materials that led to the fire at Grenfell Tower were also causing thousands to die from cold each winter, in poorly insulated flats.

“Thousands more high rise residents are now at risk from cold since cladding and insulation have been removed as fire risks, and haven’t been replaced,” she said. “It’s not acceptable if they make things a bit safer in terms of fire but they leave people to freeze.

Emma Dent Coad, MP for Kensington spoke about her frustration at the government for not creating and enforcing strict regulations on construction companies before and after Grenfell.

She was born and raised in Kensington and Chelsea, and told of how her own negative housing experiences propelled her into politics. “I had no heating until I was 17 and I did end up in hospital,” she said. “My ceiling collapsed and almost killed my three year-old daughter – thank you Nottinghill housing.”

She highlighted the government’s “appalling” approach to housing insulation, saying, “even in the richest borough in the world [Kensington] we still have 70 excess winter deaths a year – people who die when they shouldn’t have because of the cold.”

“We are not saving money by not keeping warm. It’s a burden on the health service. People are dying who don’t need to die. Children are growing up in awful damp, mouldy situations. This is terrifying – people are being made ill by their homes.”

She stressed poor government oversight and construction company’s cost-cutting practices as the cause for this poor quality infrastructure.

Similar frustrations were raised by Sian Berry, London Assembly Mayor and Green Councillor for Camden, who described her horror at the poor practices of construction companies.

“We’ve had heating re-done in an entire estate and we’ve had enormous problems with the quality of the work,” she said. She explained how residents had to work tirelessly to prove that the construction work was inadequate, drawing up lists and calling numerous meetings with councillors.

“When a resident complains about mould, they get the classic response that: ‘oh, you’re doing too much washing’ or ‘you’re using your appliances wrong’, when actually it’s the house itself that’s causing the problems,” Berry said.

She talked specifically about the Chalcots Estate in Camden which had to be evacuated last year when it was deemed a fire hazard and unsafe for living.

“It wasn’t just the cladding at Chalcots that meant it needed to be evacuated, it was also really shoddy internal work,” she explained.

Another hot topic at the meeting was landlords’ reluctance to take even basic steps towards improving relations with tenants, even after the atrocities at Grenfell. In some instances, they have refused to foot the bill for replacement cladding or do retroactive reconstruction work on buildings.

An architect-in-training from Concrete Action, said that “council estates have been under-maintained for years and years”. One of the reasons she gave for this is that “specifications for building materials can be changed at the last minute because wording is so vague and people can navigate around the wording and cut corners to save money.”

The meeting was attended by a wide range of people with personal experience of poor housing, or expensive and dysfunctional district heating systems. The panelists’ speeches were followed by an extremely spirited and enthusiastic discussion in which many were vocal in their agreement that the government needs to improve its oversight and regulation of construction companies.

All of the speakers stressed the need for increased involvement from residents in decision-making. “The whole system is set up so that residents don’t really have any say,” said the architect from concrete action. “The reality is that people are experts in the areas they live in because they know what they need and what’s important.”