Lower household bills

• Submit meter readings: If you don’t have a smart meter, ensure you submit your meter readings so you’re being charged for what you’re using, not an estimate.
• Time your heating and hot water: If you can, use your timer and set the hot water and heating to come on when you need them, rather than being on all the time.
• Retain the heat: Move big items of furniture so they’re not blocking the radiators; use draught excluders in front of doors; and open your curtains during the day to let in the sunlight (and free heat!) and close them when the sun goes down. 
• Standby appliances: Unplug or turn off electronics at the wall when they’re not in use, because even in standby mode, they can consume energy. 
• Lighting: Switch to energy-efficient light bulbs and turn off lights when you leave a room.
• Shorter showers: Reduce water consumption and energy usage by taking shorter showers. 
• Don't overfill the kettle: Only boil the amount of water you need to save energy. 
• Washing and dishwashing: Try to use your washing machine/dishwasher only when you have enough to fill it, and use your washing machine on a cooler wash cycle.
• Make use of microwaves and air fryers: Around 3% of the home’s energy use comes from cooking - but using an air fryer or microwave can cost less than using a conventional oven to cook the same meal.
• Turn down your thermostat: Turn down your thermostat on your heating. Just a slight reduction in the thermostat can make a difference to your bill!
• Use a lid: When cooking, keep the lids on your saucepans.
• Storage heaters: If you have a storage heater, watch our video guide on using it effectively to save money.

Please note: we do not encourage you to turn off any extractor fans you have in your home to save on electricity. These fans do not use up much electricity and by turning them off, you may cause excess condensation, which can lead to damp and mould.

• Grants from energy suppliers: Many energy suppliers offer grants or financial support to help you manage. See what support is available from your energy providers: British Gas , Scottish Power , Ovo Energy , E.ON Energy Fund  and E.ON Next Energy Fund , EDF Energy , Octopus .
• Use a prepayment meter?: If you can’t afford to top up your prepayment meter, ask your energy supplier for ‘emergency credit’. You can also ask your local council or a food bank if there are fuel vouchers available.
• Government support: The government has announced a range of support to help with the rising cost of living and an energy price cap is also in place. Find out more about this and what cost of living support you could be eligible for on the government's Help For Households  webpage. There are also other payment plans, schemes, grants and benefits on the Ofgem website .

Remember that gas and electricity companies cannot cut off your supply unless they have first offered you a range of payment methods to help you pay. They can only disconnect your supply as a last resort and they must give you proper notice first.

You may be entitled to a council tax discount or rebate - find out more information on the types of discounts available . Contact your local council  to apply for a discount.

You may be able to able to access a cheaper 'social tariff' broadband and phone package if you claim Universal Credit, Pension Credit and some other benefits. 

You can also cut costs on your TV services by making the most of Freeview, switching streaming plan and finding the best digital TV deal - and save on your broadband deal too.

Check if you have an exemption from paying NHS costs . An NHS exemption certificate helps you to pay for your NHS costs, such as prescriptions or dental treatment.

David McCormick   0:08

For I think over the last three years or maybe even four, one of our oldest partners and we've helped a lot of customers, I think almost over 1000 customers with their household bills. I'll talk about that shortly. The service that we provide, it's a free service to all sovereign tenants.

Mika Curtis   0:12

Hmm. Yeah.

David McCormick   0:27

So yeah, I'll get on to that shortly. But yeah, before you, I just thought I'd give we'd give an overview of what we're going to cover. So myself, I will go into energy saving tips as as Mika already mentioned, you know, energy costs have gone up.

They are. They're continuing to rise and it's the most biggest time of the year. We use, we use the most energy, so it's extra important just to those small habits that we we have. If we can change small habits to say, yeah, save on energy and make our homes more energy efficient, it will see put more money back into our pockets.
Do you want to talk a bit about a given a brief overview of what you're going to cover on your side, Mika?

Mika Curtis   1:11

Probably introduced myself as well actually. So hello. My name is Mika. I work within the financial and digital inclusion team. My role specifically is within our energy support service, but fiddy financial and digital inclusion is about you know how we support our customers.

David McCormick   1:14

Mm-hmm.

Mika Curtis   1:27

Making long term changes to better the situation, but this will be an energy focus, but what we're going to be talking about in addition to pocket powers tips is a bit of sustainability and renewable energy, and why, you know, I think it's important for people to, you know, really take notice of what that means, but also the importance of keeping.

Warm. You know, we had a sort of a very scorching hot summer, but you know, it's started to get a lot cooler, a lot colder. And I think just want to make it very clear why people need to make sure that they're warm and their homes are heated, not just for yourself, perhaps for family, you know.

Friends, neighbours, please, just keep a lookout and we'll also go into, you know, the price cap. You know, you probably hear it to death. What the price cap is, but we'll kind of go into that in a little bit of detail. And also, you know, why I think you know, you should switch energy suppliers. You know? So yeah, there'll be some slides to come for that.

David McCormick   2:20

I didn't. Lovely. So, without further ado, let's talk about Pocket power, which is where I'm from and what we do. So this is our logo, recently changed our rebrand rebranded, but we offer a as I touched the point earlier, we offer a we work with the 10, the tenants of software.

And many other housing associations and we offer a phone service as this slide shows. We help people save money by switching and accessing discounts on their major household bills. So in short, you can get booked in for a call with us and all these.

Different things on on these slides on this slide, we can chat about and we've got loads of different ways to help you save money on them. So to point out a few of them, we've got water discounts, so might not know this, but most of the big water providers do have discounted tariffs.

And can be a bit of a FAP to get put on to them. We've made the process really simple, so through our you know we can speak to one of our team, we can check your eligibility on that call and get your application sent off on your behalf within a few minutes.

Hopefully saving you a few £100 a year on on your water. There's also some other water things that we can look at as well like water metres, water saving gadgets and that sort of thing. If you've got arrears with water, we can help you look at ways to try and get that cleared.

So there's yeah, that's water as one example, we also look at other bills like mobile phone, broadband and energy bills. So all the stuff that we've we're going to cover today, we can actually give you tailored advice if you book in a call with us, we can look at switching. We can look at energy saving tips specifically.

All that good stuff we're going to give a good overview now on the energy side of things, just because you know this is the hot topic at the moment. But yeah, if you did want to explore it further, then you're welcome to begin a call with us and there's a future side about that.

Yeah, that's kind of the main core of the service, this energy, water, mobile phone and broadband. But then if depending on your circumstances, we can look at other things as well. For example, there are grants out there for replacement appliances that we can help you apply for.

It does depend on like where you live and and circumstances, but we've had some really good successes with with that recently. And then yeah, if you've got arrears in certain bills, particularly water and energy, we can look at sort of charities and schemes that actually can help you clear that.

But yeah, if you think that might be of interest, we actually helped over 1000 SNG tenants so far and actually over 200K has been saved on their annual bills through our calls. So it's an average we tend to save about £200 for each person that we speak to and some a lot more.

Actually as well. So yeah, if you'd like to be referred, just speak to probably a housing officer. I think that's probably the best approach is that Mika or or there's a, yeah.

Mika Curtis   5:31

Yeah. So they can give us a call. We've put some details in the chat for them. But yeah, if there's any instance struggling, give us a call.

David McCormick   5:36

OK. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned they can get referred to pocket power and yeah, it's tailored support to your specific and it's usually only lasts about 30 to 40 minutes. So really we can really hopefully save you a lot of time because it can be quiet. I know it can be quite daunting to kind of try and get get a hold on the bills, especially if.
They're they're rides and it's and it's struggling to afford them. So yeah, please do reach out and we can we can help you.

Right. Let's talk about the specific let's go on to the core of this. This seminar then. So how can we save on energy the, the the part? I'm going to talk about is really cutting energy usage, so.

Well, actually, there's three things here. So yeah, reduce there's three ways we really can save on energy with the first part would be reducing usage. So if you reduce usage, the metre won't clock up as much each month and.

We won't be charged as much by our energy provider, so if we can reduce our usage, it's only going to save us money. So that's what I'm going to cover and switching on to a cheaper tariff, that's another way to save money, you know, because depending on the provider, you're with some charge you more for each unit of energy than others. So.

Mika's going to go into this in more detail, but you know there are some fixed tariffs out there that can be a lot cheaper than if you just sort of stay on your providers default tariff, which, yeah, that's worth exploring. And then also I'm going to touch upon this briefly as well. But as I mentioned, there is help and support out there, so.
If you are struggling to afford your bills, a lot of the Ng providers do have you know they've put, put, put some some help for those customers they've put aside a pot of money to, you know, offer, you know, sometimes black like what they called heated throws as electric blankets, they've sometimes can offer support towards.
Clearing debts? Yeah, there's lots out there and I'll touch upon some of the the different things that are out there.
Good so.

OK, before I talk about the way to cut your energy usage, I think as I've I've previously used to work in the energy industry and I used to work as a customer service.

What's the word? Yeah, used to do customer service for an energy provider, so I kind of saw the frontline of all different issues that can happen with energy bills and kind of as I'm here. I just wanted to quickly just give a few Nuggets of just general good advice when it comes to your energy bills.

So just to prevent any issues that can crop up or to help you with that and the first thing is really if you haven't got a smart metre, really it is important to submit readings regularly. So.

Yeah, just to be ensure that you're billed accurately, if you're not, if you don't submit readings, you don't have a smart metre, then you're just going to be billed on estimates and it might look like you know you're in credit or you might look like everything's OK. But as soon as you actually give a real reading, they correct your bills according to what you've actually.

Used. So it's really important for that reason to give a reading every at least every three months just to ensure that you know you've kind of they're charging you the right amount for your bills. I've seen too many times where it's gone wrong because they were overestimating or underestimating the amount. And then.

It can, yeah. Can cause confusion about the bills and how much people are paying. But yeah, that's less of a problem nowadays since smart metres and if you pay by top up then that doesn't need to worry either because if you pay by pop up then you just you know you've already paid for the energy that you're going to use.

If your energy provider has not resolved your issue, so this does come up as well. If you do have any issues with your energy provider, this is something we can help with as well, so hopefully it does happen from time to time. You know if there's a metering issue or whatever, you can, you know, would really recommend if you raise a complaint. So we've seen.

Again, it depends on the provider, but if you have an issue with your provider, it's always worth raising a complaint and then that's logged on their system and too many times you might speak to provider. You know you've got to meet you and maybe a smart meet is not working. They'll be like right, I'll call you back.

Tomorrow to sort it out. And of course it doesn't happen because maybe the yeah, it does happen. Yeah, I think the staff often are very busy and then maybe they just can't keep their promising. It's a shame. But if you raise a complaint, it basically gets logged at a higher level.

Mika Curtis   10:11

Been there. Yeah.

David McCormick   10:25

And they and energy providers are really incentivized to resolve complaints, and they can be penalised if they don't. So usually someone from the complaints team will almost certainly get back to you if you've got a complaint logged with a complaint number. So yeah, if you can speak to a manager or something. Again, if you struggle with this.

Look in the call with us because one of our team, we can do what's called a three-way call. And so for example myself could sit with you and then we could call British Gas together and we can all kind of have a conversation together and it can usually help get their issue resolved faster, but.

Yeah, just to say as well, if after a complaint has been raised, the hasn't been resolved within eight weeks, there was what's called the Energy Ombudsman, which is really great. It's a odd word, ombudsman. I hadn't heard of it before, but it's kind of like a legal support, almost.

They they're a free service where they can help you resolve and escalate the complaint and they kind of have a back route into the complaints team and at the energy suppliers and they do a kind of a legal investigation. They look at both sides of what the issue was about.

It can take quite a few weeks to get resolved, but so just a good thing to have. It's kind of like a consumer protection and service to just, yeah, hold energy supplies to account. And if you have a complaint that's gone for more than eight weeks, you can get in touch with them and they'll help you kind of.
Get it sorted basically.

Good. So yeah, bit of a tangent there went on a bit, but I just wanted to make that was clear, yeah.

Mika Curtis   11:57

No, it's a useful tangent. David, I think you know you're kind of like in the know being sort of having worked in energy services before. I think sometimes also, you know, the advocacy element of the pocket Power service is so powerful, you know, got a lot of customers who might be in a lot of debt and just the prospect of ringing EDF, you're British.

David McCormick   12:03

Uh-huh.

Mika Curtis   12:16

Gas is too much and I think having someone that can support that is like honestly like so beneficial. Like I don't think it. I think it's underestimated so well done.

David McCormick   12:18

Yeah. Mm-hmm. Oh, right, so on to the energy saving tips. So how can we cut our usage over the winter? It's a couple of key Nuggets. There's a well, there's a few different points here, but this is a term that I think Martin Lewis coined, which is heat. The human, not the home.

It's obviously it's all within. It's all you don't want to take it to extremes, but the the basic idea is, you know, if you're going to heat the space that you're sitting in, it uses a lot more energy than if you just heat yourself. So if you have an electric blanket, or even just a thick rug.

That uses a lot less energy, obviously, than, say, having the heating on at a high temperature. So if you are struggling to kind of, especially with the gas bills being very high, it's obviously you know you don't want to have your heating too low, but you could perhaps drop it down to.

A slightly lower temperature, not so low that you could have health issues, which I know Mika's going to get into later, but yeah, it's it's always worth considering when when heating this is is so expensive and also just.
You know if you've got radiators that have the thermostatic radiator valves. If you've got a bigger house you can turn down the radiators in the rooms where you're not using and just kind of just try and heat the spaces where you're actually in rather than heating on new spaces.

Second one would be you know, especially if you're like a single occupant.

You're just cooking for yourself. I would recommend switching to an air fryer or a microwave if you're if you're cooking, because actually, if you have a big oven, that's quite a lot of space to heat up, and they do use quite a bit of electric or gas. If you've got a gas oven. So I guess it's really just to, you know, if you're going to use the oven like maximum.

Organise it. You know, cook in bulk. Use all the shelves and and really take advantage of that hot space. But can happen. You know, if we just. Yeah, it can use a lot of energy, the oven. And so we were trying to make the most of it and then and then there are these devices like IFR is a microwave that are used a lot less energy and smaller and can be.

If you know just reheating food or cooking for yourself, so there's yeah, that's a recommendation. There some other tips here. So if you've got a smart metre, it's got an ihd which stands for an in home display, which is the little monitor that should connect to the smart metre and actually tells you kind of how much your energy you've used.

Day so that can be helpful to see. You know if you've got how you've got on in terms of your consumption, it can sometimes hint towards maybe you've got an appliance that is extra is very inefficient. Maybe you know, sometimes I remember reading a news article of someone that had a really old fridge that was costing him an absolute fortune. And I think he had a on his in home to stay realised.

That and kind of got a smart plug and was able to kind of figure out actually it was my fridge that needs replacing because it's costing like I can't remember how many maybe a pound a day or something like that to run so that it can be useful to just get an idea of what you're using.

Mika Curtis   15:33

Interesting you say that, David, I was speaking with a customer earlier who had bought like you know, the cheapest fridge they can find. But often you know it's the cheapest because it's the most expensive to run. So it's definitely worth people being mindful of that.

David McCormick   15:33

Umm. That's yeah. Yeah, it's a tricky one with fridges, isn't it? Yeah, it's. Yeah, they it's. Yeah. It's not a trick. It's difficult when you're on a tight budget for sure. But that's thing about cheaper fridges. They are usually the least efficient, so you can pay later. Almost.

Mika Curtis   16:00

Yeah.

David McCormick   16:03

But no, a lot of these are fairly self-explanatory. You know if you haven't already switched energy efficient light bulbs that can, that can be about 20% they can use about sorry 20 times less energy, extremely little energy they use. If you do have appliances on standby worth turning those off.

Yeah, yeah. I mean that's fairly selfish friendly, leaving lights on and and she steps in the kitchen. Not sure what that means actually, but I'll just move on from that. We do have a web on our website pocket-power.co.uk. We do have a lot of different articles just about saving money in general.

And we do have one of specifically about energy, which has got a lot of these tips in there, but it actually has a little table here which looks a little bit ugly, but it shows the cost per hour of running different appliances. So and the kWh.

Relative usage per per hour, essentially so as you can see like top of the chart would be tumble dryer oven. These two are the most energy biggest consumers of electric. So yeah. If you're able to kind of switch to using like a.

Yeah, not using a tumble dryer. I guess it depends if you're in a small flat or you didn't have access to that sort of thing to to, for example, putting clothes on a heated air for example. I think that's a lot less. I think that's further down electric clothes dryer at the bottom on the left. That's only like 7 P an hour to run. So.
It's. Yeah, I'm not going to dwell too much on this slide, but there are it's it's always worth trying to look into. Wait, like if you've got any big apply big usage appliances. If there's ways we can switch to, yeah, ones that consume less.

Right onto heating. So obviously a huge subject and probably the biggest consumer of of energy over the year. But I've got a few tips here for for just saving on your heating, first one would be if you have a combi boiler so.
That is, if that's a boiler that.

Doesn't have a hot water tank, so if you've got a hot water tank in the property, it wouldn't be a combi boiler. It's one of the it's basic. It's a more modern boiler where it kind of heats on demand. So when you turn the heating on, the boiler fires up and turn the hot tap on or the hot shower.

The boiler fires up and there's no hot water tank. It just heats the the water or like as soon as it's required. If you have one of these then there is a really simple tweak you can make to the boiler settings that can reduce the consumption of gas by 8%.

Which can actually correlate to about £100 a year just by literally turning chaining and chain turning down a dial on your on your boiler. So I think on the next slide, I do have a, a, a, an image, but there's a really there's kind of an idiot proof.

In the idiot proof guide that you can follow, if you just Google search money saving boiler challenge it's step by step it's got it should have almost every type of boiler is on there and you can just it. Just follow it through and it guides you so it doesn't work if you've got.

Mika Curtis   19:07

I love that.

David McCormick   19:23

A hot water tank. Unfortunately, that's yeah. We would not recommend doing changing the settings on the hot water tank because it can actually be dangerous. If you've got one of those. But if you've got, you haven't got a water tank, it should be fine to to do that. Yeah, other things. So if you've got heating controls and you can kind of change the time that the heating.

Turns on and off. Then you know we don't. We don't want you to have the boiler on more than it's needed. Really. So if you go out, you know, at 9:00 every morning, turn off the boiler 30 minutes before have it programmed to be go off 30 minutes before so that you're not just heating a space that's going to be unused.
Similarly, you know if you come home at 5 programme it to maybe turn on a bit before your home 30 minutes before so that you have come home to a warm house. But yeah, Keating controls can save a lot of money on on that if when they're programmed correctly and yeah, if you've got a thermostat.

Actually can save around 7% for each degree, so again we don't want to put it too low, but maybe around. Maybe you can guide us on what's the kind of ideal range later Mika. But yeah, it's every degree matters that we sell. You know that we can can reduce our heating by.

Cool. So yeah, this is an example of a combi boiler settings, so there are different loads of different combi boiler, some just have buttons, some have dial one dial, some have three dials, some have digital displays, some don't. This is just one example. But if if you have this kind of boiler.

With with what you want to do is find a dial with the radiator symbol, which is looks like the little ladder on its side, and you want to basically turn it to the negative and what you'd normally see is the display would flash up with the what's called the flow temperature.

And normally it's set to around 7075°, but if you turn it down to about 55° this puts the boiler into a what's called a condensing mode, which I'm not like a trained like plumber. I'm not exactly sure on how it exactly works, but.
The the bottom line is you're it's a more efficient way for your boiler to run when it's heating up your radiators and yeah.

It's the the analogy I've I've heard said is is. It's almost like when you're heating up the water. So this is the it's heating up the water to a lower temperature or it's kind of heating up the water at a slower rate. That's kind of like when you're driving a car.

If you just slam on the accelerator, you're going to get to it. Is required speed faster, but you use a lot more petrol, whereas if you have, if you kind of gently accelerate you, you'll use less petrol and you'll eventually get there. Might take a little bit longer, but you'll it's a more efficient way in terms of fuel, so kind of an analogy.

Mika Curtis   22:24

I did not know that.

David McCormick   22:24

Be there with the boiler. You're kind of getting up to the getting the radius up to temperature, but a slightly slower rate. And in the in the same time saving money. So yeah, money saving boiler challenge. No Combi bought, no hot water tank and down to 55 in short.

Good. OK. So just a couple slides left actually. So doing good with time. I wasn't sure how long it would take me to get through these. So other support that's out there so we can put this referral through if you do book in a call with us, but just to kind of make you aware.

Mika Curtis   22:50

Yeah.

David McCormick   22:59

That yeah, this is kind of the other support that's out there. There is a great company that we're working with called Leap who are the local energy advice partnership and they are funded by energy providers, so.
A good use of money that ghost energy providers do put they do give some money back to to organisations and they offer a service to help help people improve their home's energy efficiency. So.

We can do it. We can refer into leap. In fact, if you Google leap, you could you can refer yourself if you're feeling savvy. But we can talk you through it and put that referral through if you'd like and what they offer is a either they can either do a phone service where they give you telephone advice.

Similar to what I've done just now, but I think they go into a bit more detail with how to save energy and make your home as energy efficient as as possible. I can also post you out as I've written here different energy saving gadgets, things like low energy light bulbs, Dr Proofing. There are these panel like foils.

That you can put behind the radiators that can reflect heat back inwards on external walls again to save energy. Smart plugs that can do all that all free of charge and to your home. And yeah, just really take you aside and support you there. So that's they can offer telephone advice across the entire country and in certain areas.
Areas just depend on where you live. They can do home visits so an expert could come and visit your home and kind of install those things for you in your property and and then also explain all of it to you. And in certain parts they can offer replacement white goods.

And if you're a homeowner, also boilers. So yeah, I think I think washing machines on there, I think they've stopped doing washing machines, they're doing fridge freezers at the moment, they're doing fridge freezers. They can, they can offer air fryers as well. If you've got a broken cooker.

Mika Curtis   24:51

I think so too.

David McCormick   24:58

And things like dehumidifiers and heated errors. Those kinds of things. So really if you're looking for some support, they're they're an excellent one to to get in touch with again as part of the service, we have a partnership with them, but just wanted to make you aware.

And finally, so I touched upon this earlier. So if you're struggling with arrears. Fundamentally, if you're struggling to keep up with the Ng bills, you know that's nothing to to be ashamed of. You know, there's it's incredibly expensive at the moment, and yeah, it's it's a very it's very difficult and there is some good news. There are lots of organisations out there to try and help you, so.

For one, a lot of the energy providers do have hardship schemes, particularly if you've suffered some sort of, you know, could be a health issue. Any any particular hardship, you know, energy providers understand and they they do have schemes which you can apply for to usually offer some sort of.

What it can be, I guess, yeah. Usually it does depend on the provider, but for example British Gas, they can offer debt wipes up to I think 2000 lbs. So Scottish Power also a similar amount with their hardship fund.
So we we can help pocket power with filling out those application forms because they can be a bit involved. They do ask for quite a bit of information, but we can we can kind of help you and talk you through it and help you fill out those forms and kind of we're very experienced. We've done so many of them already. So we kind of know all the.

Bricks of the trade when it comes to getting those applications over the line, other providers like Ovo octopus. I think they can. Yeah, they can sometimes offer other energy efficiency gadgets. As I said, things like heated throws and sometimes have payment matching schemes where you.

What you can pay towards the arrears and they'll match any payments towards it so the support does vary, but we can talk you through you know what your provider offers and help you apply for that.

Additionally, there is other support so that does depend on the Council, but all Councils have been given funding from the government called the Household Support Fund. So if you are struggling with energy costs, particularly if you're on prepayment metre, maybe looking for.

You know struggling due to a hardship and you and you can't top up then struggling to afford to top up. Local councils do sometimes have energy vouchers or even food vouchers to shopping vouchers, for example, like supermarket ones which you can apply for through the Household Support Fund.
They each each Council is slightly different and how they're using the funding. Some you can just apply on their website, others maybe have to go to a support agency to to get the support. But again we can help you look at what what your Council offers and help you apply for any support that's there.

And I'm sure probably sovereign would would have an idea there as well about about local stuff that the Council are doing. And finally, when it comes to debt, you know, it's a very difficult subject to to talk about. And you know there is a bit of a taboo around it, so.

You know, it's just take, you know, it does take courage and but there are really trained, there are trained professionals out there that can really help you take your side, talk about your options and look at kind of getting you through it not you know you don't have to suffer in silence and just.

You know, bury your head in the sand as it can be tricky, but I know I think if I'm correct me if I'm wrong, but you do. Is it SNG you do offer money and debt advice service in house. Yeah. So brilliant. So yeah. One of the team say again. Sorry.

Mika Curtis   28:51

Yes, we do. That is correct. I'm paying attention, even paying attention. I love it.

David McCormick   29:00

Great. Yeah. So I just, they can look at, you know, helping you put together a budgeting plan and usually I've, I hope I'm not. I hope I'm saying all the right things that it's correct, but most money and debt advice agencies can help, you know, look at things like.

Contacting providers with you or looking at, you know, getting budgeting plans in place and helping you prioritise where to spend your money. If it's all a bit overwhelming. So yeah, just reach out for to to SNG and they can. They can get you in contact with one of their team for that.
Yeah.

Good. So yeah, were there any questions at all? I guess it's just yourself, Michelle. But if there's anything at all on that before I I think we're getting on to.

On to Mika's side of the presentation. But give it a few seconds if you did want to pop a question into the chat. If not, we can move right on to to you Mika.

I think so.

Mika Curtis   30:07

Yeah.

David McCormick   30:08

There you go. Yeah.

Mika Curtis   30:08

All right haha. So I will sort of go on. So this slide is about, you know, cold and how that affects your health. A lot of conversation when it comes to heating is very much focused on the cost element, which of course is like a really big important thing. But I think people need to also consider, you know, the health.

David McCormick   30:11

Ha ha.

Mika Curtis   30:28

Impact and why you need to keep warm for your health and this is an illustration that she borrowed from the Centre for sustainability regarding how the cold affects your health on the left of the thermometer, people have their own preference as to what temperature they like. For me personally, I like to sleep in the cold, everyone's different, but the recommendation for rooms that you are you have your heating in is to be between 18 to 21 for most healthy adults, and I say most healthy adults because depending on any like medical conditions, age that temperature may need to differ. So the minimum is 18 when temperatures drop below.

That when it kind of starts to get a bit blue, this does have a very real and serious toll on your health and you know well-being and really like your overall life. You know the issue is then further compounded by those who have the medical conditions. Perhaps if they're elderly, young children, when that temperature starts to fall below 18.

That cold temperature does diminish your resistance to things like respiratory diseases. You know, breathing in the cold air can increase things like chest infections, existing conditions, COPD, chronic obstructive.
Pulmonary disease, I think I said that wrong. But you know these are conditions that can be made worse by the cold air and additionally cold homes tend to have more issues with things like dampened mould. As a side note, if you do have a dampened mould issue, please report this to us and we'll put our phone details.

Towards the end of the slide, but you know, cold temperature does tend to exacerbate those kind of problems, and also, you know, it's really hard to sleep if you're cold. And if you don't get enough sleep, that does impact, you know, how you function during the day and you know.

Temperatures which fall even further than this. That actually becomes extremely dangerous to your health. You know colder temperatures. It's going to get a bit sciencey, but so the colder temperature will kind of cause your blood vessels to narrow, and then that increases your blood pressure. Something to work hard to push that blood through. And that then does increase.

The risk of things, you know, like blood clots and if you take it into a more severe route, the risk of heart attack and stroke does increase. The colder your home is. So if anyone you know or yourself fall into those kind of at risk categories.

Staying warm is so much more important. If this is something that you are struggling with, please do contact us and let us know. We can talk a bit more about your situation. I think sometimes you know energy can be very specific to your household. The way you live, your habits and it might be that you kind of need something a bit more individual.

Absolutely fine. We can have that phone call. Let's talk about it. So I'll quickly go into. It's called cold weather benefits, which I feel like is a really weird title to call, like cold weather doesn't really benefit anybody, but that's what the table's called. So work with me, the first being the Warm Home Discount. So that is a one off payment that's applied directly.

Directly to your household electric bill in order to get this, you have to have an account with a participating electricity supplier, which you know most of them are, and you have to be claiming certain benefits. And if you are eligible, you should receive between now and January 2026 a letter which notifies you that you're getting.
Discount if you don't get that letter by mid January and you think you should be getting it, you do need to ring them. Please do so on that number in that section. Similarly, winter fuel payment which is for those who've reached a state pension age.

For those born on or before the 22nd of September 1959, so that amount you get paid, it varies on several factors, including your age, income benefits. But that's also an automatic payment, so if someone.

You know you care for or no should be getting it and they haven't by end of January, please do chase it up. I do want to say that these are automatic, so you shouldn't have to, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't. Just in case you know, it's always worth checking if you should be getting money that you're not.

And the cold weather payment. So this is some is a bit more confusing. So for those who get certain benefits, you would receive this cold weather payment if the average temperature in your area is recorded or forecasted to be 0°C or lower over 7 consecutive days.

It's another automatic payment. You should also let your local job centre know if you have a baby. If you're looking after kids under 5, let them know, because if that does happen, it does get that chilly. You will get 25 lbs for each seven day period block.

It's more money that you know you're eligible for if that happens, so please, do, you know, keep on, keep a lookout for that. It's something you should be notified about. But so keep that in your back pocket in case you need it later.

This is a pie chart, because who doesn't want a pie chart during webinar series? So getting a little bit educational? Again, I don't want to spend too much time on this slide, but it shows sort of, you know, an average of how much your energy bill goes towards certain parts of your home.

And unsurprisingly, you know, a lot of that does go towards the heating and you know, it's a big, big thing that people worry about aren't concerned about, but it's good to know where your money goes and where it gets to be spent. This is also just an estimation. Obviously, things differ in.

Dairy depending on you know how you heat your home, how many people are in the home. But as a rule of thumb, you know, for every pound you spend about 65 pence of that is spent on the heating. And I think it's important that people realise where kind of the money goes to and This is why this webinar is quite focused on the heating element.

And you know, as David mentioned, you know it's important to heat the human and you know, because a lot of money does actually go towards that.

So this is a slide on where the heat goes, something that is always guaranteed is that heat will always escape. You know, it's quite tricky that way, you know, and a lot of the mechanism that we have in place, like your insulation, are just ways of delaying that heat loss.

And you know, please do let us know if you have any concerns regarding your insulation. If that needs to be checked. But you know the a lot of heat will go through the walls, and that's simply because the wall has a large surface area. So it's just sort of more sort of space for the heat to try and escape.

And so insulation, very important, there's some pictures here. So the thing on the top right is actually a chimney balloon. So people may have a chimney in the property that's not actually used, but there's still air going through it. So, you know, let us know. Or if you speak with leap, let them know we can get you a chimney balloon.

You know, radio radiator reflectors are quite interesting because you kind of put them behind the radiator and then they sort of, you know, push back heat towards you, which is really nice, helps you keep warm where it says draught. So a draught being kind of like a, you know, unexplained breeze which is coming through when you kind of can't really figure out where it's from, you know these.

Tend to be from, like the letterbox. They can sometimes come from your windows underneath doors. If you believe that there's actually like a repair issue with your doors or the Windows, please report that. But you can implement things like draught excluders. You can get a letter box, brush which sort of helps, you know, keep that wind out.

The drawer, the sort of the gold looking circular items. Those are actually for the key holes and if some people can get draughts through the keyhole because there's nothing covering it, that's a good way to do it. You've also got Windows as a source of heat. You know the walls is definitely kind of like the biggest culprit alongside the roof.

But you know, there are things you can do to try and keep that heat in for as long as possible, and there's things like rugs, curtains, you know, these are things that you can easily implement at home to make sure that you know the warm stays, you know where you are, which is kind of, you know, most important.

This is another table because we love tables at S&GI just wanted to illustrate what the associated savings are with each of the actions which David went over. And I think what's really important to know is that you don't have to make any drastic changes with how you do things day-to-day.

It's just they're making really small amendments to how you go about your day and I think people often underestimate the money that can be saved, as if you do all of these things, my dad used to tell me when I was little he could tell what room I was in because I would leave a trail of destruction behind me, one of those being that I left all the lights on, left all the appliances on. I was.

Young and dumb, and didn't really think about it until when I moved out and start paying my own. I realised, you know the old man was on to something, you know, these things do add up and these cost savings are also modest estimations based on, you know the Energy Saving Trust, you know, Energy Agency, home heating guide. If you were to check on your own.

Individual energy supplier. They actually estimate it to be higher, so you know 145 turned down a thermostat. It could easily be a lot more than that depending on, you know your heating system. One thing I will say is that please don't turn your thermostat down by 1°.

Just to save money, like if it's already on 18, don't put it down to 17. It needs to be a minimum of 18. You know. Similarly, if you're going to save 145 lbs by turning it up by 1°, it may be that if you put it up by 1, it's then costing you 145 for the year. So it's worth kind of noting.

That I also want to kind of really drill home how important it is to learn how to use your heating system. You know, you kind of see it more often with people with economy 7 tariffs or storage heating. They can often be caught out by, you know, time of use.

Generally, the daytime rate is quite expensive compared to the night time, and I think people who don't understand the oh, the doorbell, their heating system that well often end up paying for those lessons. So make sure you stay on that. I find the kettle one really awkward and silly, so I used to think it was really weird, but actually.

You know, a kettle is one of the appliances in the home that costs so much to run, you know, and it's kind of it comes down to a bit of a science. Again, if you quickly heat something up really, really quickly, it's very, very power hungry and unfortunately, you're paying for that privilege. You know, I sometimes find myself advising customers, you know, don't use.

The kettle to heat water. Sometimes people might think I'm going to just heat up some water for the washing or you know please, you know, if you do that, just know that there's going to be a cost to certified with you doing that to just be careful and there's something I've been debating whether I should talk about it, but there is.
A theory, or perhaps a bias called a loss aversion. It's essentially the notion that people tend to much more powerfully experience loss than they do the anticipation of a gain. So I'm telling you you could save £450, but you're like Mika.

I could save it, but I don't have that £450 now, so instead I want to tell you that by not doing these things you're actually losing £450. You know you're giving that money to energy companies that probably don't really need it.
So, you know, save that £450 for yourself. Go on that holiday with your family, have a nice Christmas, don't spend your money recklessly. You know, these are really simple, easy to use tricks just to keep the bills down.
And if you want to discuss any of these further, please do you know you'll have our details you can give us a call or I can arrange a discussion with you to discuss that more further. Yeah. These are just really quick, easy tips, you know. And I think from a sustainability perspective, it's really important to note that, you know, your behaviours in the home.

Do contribute to making sure that you know we don't have a horrific climate disaster. You know, these CO2 savings when I kepted them all up so 1.365 tonnes is actually almost the equivalent of a round trip to New York from London.

So there's a lot of, you know, you know, emissions that are being caused by these behaviours and I think sustainability extends further than just being energy efficient. You know, I try and do things like I don't buy clothes new where I can avoid it. I've recently discovered vintage, which is causing all kinds of problems for my bank balance. But I'm trying to avoid.

Purchasing things that are new because if you decrease the demand for new things, less new things are produced, which then don't end up in a landfill. I'm also discovering things like repair CAFS where or cafes. If you're posh, and if you have something that's broken, it could be electronic, it could be an item of clothing.

Try repairing it. Don't throw it away if it's something that can be salvaged, you know, don't be so quick to discard it. How can you upcycle? How can you reuse? You know, do you have an item that some maybe a friend could borrow? I'm trying to explore a deal with my neighbours about having a communal lawn mower.

Like, why do we each to buy our own lawn mower? That's ridiculous. Let's share one and I think you know, just behaving more sustainability and being so. I think it's also got a really lovely community feel to it. You know, you've got others who are like minded trying to do the same thing. You know, these aren't like really big, drastic actions you have to take. And I hope that this table kind of illustrates, you know.

So why we tell you to like not leave the lights on when you're not in a room? You know, there's actually a cost benefit to you for doing that.

Now for the gas and unit prices. So yeah, the price cap is obviously talked about quite a lot. I think Martin Lewis refers to it as the pants cap, which I subscribe to 100%, so.

This is really important for those of of our customers who are not on a fixed rate tariff if they're not on a fixed rate tariff, they're very likely on a standard variable tariff. And that essentially means that your supplier are just charging you the maximum they're allowed to per unit, OK and what a fixed rate does.

It does. So you've. I've like I drawn this. I think I can. So this line here illustrates the fixed rates that suppliers are trying to advertise to you to get you to essentially, you know, pay them for your energy.

And the second line up here is where the unit price CAP currently sits. So generally if you see here the price caps tend to be a lot higher than the fixed rate tariffs. So that is why you really need to consider.

Going onto a fixed rate tariff, it just you know, it saves you money. It's worth noting that the price cap doesn't mean your bill was going to be capped. If you use a lot of energy. If you heat your home all day, you're going to be paying the amount it cost to heat your home all day. What it does is it caps the amount, energy supply, it can charge you.

Per unit and on the left we have sort of. You know the average bill for your gas and electric. Note that this does vary by region. This is just kind of like a national average. You've got your direct debit payments, your prepayments, people who pay on receipt of the bill. It used to be sort of some time ago that people.
On prepayment, metres ended up paying more for that payment method, but that's actually not the case anymore. Actually works out a bit cheaper. People who who do pay on receipt of the bill do tend to pay a bit more, and that's due to reasons like the actual administration. If you like of, you know, processing the bills, processing the payments.

You know, so I think it's worth knowing that a lot of people think, oh, if I go on a prepayment metre and we have to pay a lot more like that, isn't there, there were rules introduced to prevent that from happening. So it's no longer the most expensive payment method with price caps. So they change every three months.

We can't guarantee what they're going to be come December end of December. It's now we have the likes of EDF, British Gas and various independent any organisations who predict what they think it's going to be. But you know, it's kind of like Mystic Meg, crystal ball gazing that Martin calls it as well.

Don't know what it will be, but we can kind of sort of sort of you know predict sensitive what we think it's going to be and the current predictions as of now is that they're going to sort of be round about the same perhaps maybe a one or two percent increase.

But that's not a guarantee it could go up. You know, I think one of the difficult things particularly for the UK is that we're very dependent on things like gas and that's not something we produce ourselves. So you know, people will remember the absolute madness that was the energy crisis during the Ukraine war.

And also during post pandemic you know we are susceptible to global events when it comes to the price of wholesale guests and which is why you know I'll speak about renewable energy soon. But I think it's very important that we try and move towards a system where we're not at the mercy of global events where.

If something happens, we have to pay for it. You know, we suffered quite a lot as a result of that energy crisis and people were having to pay thousands more than they were ever used to. It was honestly, you know, people remember how much of A horrible time it was, you know, if you go on a fixed rate tariff.

For a certain amount of time, it then doesn't move for that 12 months, 24 month period. It's also worth noting that if you get a fixed rate tariff for X amount and then the price cap comes down.

You may technically be paying more, but where the press cap moves every three months, you actually probably might still be better off. I'm not a financial advisor, so I can't tell you what to do. I can sort of like give you the information and then you sort of decide what to do with it. You know, please do speak with our friends at Pocket Power to sort of, you know, talk about, you know, energy tariffs and what might be a more appropriate fee.
But you know, I think there are hundreds of thousands of UK households who are on the default tariffs because a lot of people just opt not to do anything about it. You know, I mean, you know, life is busy. Life is complicated. You know, who has time to be checking all their bills and they have to that pocket power time to do that.

So give him a call, but no, no problem. But it is hard. You know, I remember the sort of trying to do, like, my dad's energy stuff. I'm like, oh, my God, this is just one bill out of so many. And I think it's, you know, there's a lot of fatigue and just a lot of emotional bandwidth required to do that. So let us help you.

David McCormick   49:26

Thank you. Yeah.

Mika Curtis   49:43

Do those things I think you know, for those who might already be on a fixed tariff. I have seen instances where octopus and I believe EDF have let people who are on higher fixed rate tariffs transfer to a lower one as long as you stay with them and they waive the exit fee.
So that's definitely worth looking into.

David McCormick   50:04

Yeah, right. Just on just before you move on that graph, it couldn't quite see your drawings very well. I think the yellow, maybe the yellow line just for the viewers, the I think the, the, there's kind of a more squiggly line below which is the the fixed, the cheapest fixes and then the kind of straight ones.

Mika Curtis   50:08

Hmm. Oh no. Yeah.

David McCormick   50:24

Are the historic price cap prices and I think that's the key. The key message there is that the fixes at present and in historically have all pretty much always been cheaper. So if you are able to get onto a fixed it's.
It's. Yeah, it's almost certain you're going to save money as, as you said, the only thing that I've seen from from my side is if you do have a like a prepayment metre, especially if it's an old style prepayment metre where it's not a smart metre, there are pretty I haven't actually seen any fixed tariffs for those.

Mika Curtis   50:44

Always.

David McCormick   50:58
So that is one area where it can be. Yeah, that if you are one of those meets, if you have a smart metre, there are sometimes some smart, smart prepayment tariffs. There's a few of them, but they're a bit few and far between. But usually the fixed tariffs are if you're paying, you know, by direct debit or on receipt of bill, if you've got like a.
To where you pay monthly. So yeah. And if you do, usually you have to. If you have arrears with your energy provider, you're not able to switch to A to another one, but that doesn't mean you can't go on to a fix with your own provider. Just wants to try and clear that I guess. So yeah, it's worth getting in touch with the.
Provider or us and we can and we can talk you through it.

Mika Curtis   51:41

Let us do the hard work for you. It's not a problem. But yeah, I'm going to quickly run through this. We only got a few minutes left, but renewable energy, I want you guys to care simply because.

David McCormick   51:47

Oh yeah.

Mika Curtis   51:53

We can't continue relying on the wholesale prices of gas because when the world is getting increasingly complicated and we are at the mercy of those difficult situations and this has actually been a really incredible year for renewable energy, you know we're doing fantastic.

To solar, I went to Scotland recently and the amount of like you know, wind turbine like this is incredible. This is amazing. And you know, you might hear a lot of talk about net zero. You know, our move towards a more sustainable future will you know inevitably and then you know, cheap energy bills but also a stronger economy. You know these will generate.

Jobs having cheaper, cleaner energy will also be better for the environment. You know, a lot of people unfortunately suffer as a result of pollution. You know, people with asthma really struggle. My grandpa had to actually move out of London because they couldn't, you know, deal.
With the problems it was causing them, you know there was a town. I think it's called Humber, which is sort of north. If you get geography between Leeds and Sheffield, which was previously historically, you know, they produced coal, they had coal mines. And then when we kind of moved away from that, there was a lot of fears, you know, what do they do? But they're now actually.

Engineering renewable energy and there are jobs. You know, people are needed to look after the renewable infrastructure. And I think if we can sort of move toward the future where we're generating this ourselves, we're just we're stronger and more secure. And I'm trying to get too political about it because.

That ain't good. This ain't the plane we would have a phone call about it. If they want to talk, but you know, please do consider renewable energy. You know, you can. Some suppliers also have competitive renewable energy tariffs because trying to encourage people to move into that.

Yeah.

This is my attempt to still appear cool and young using memes because I was big on memes when I was younger and the essence of this slide is that loyalty doesn't pay unless it's with like family and friends. But when it comes to your energy and any household bill.

There is no reason why you shouldn't be looking elsewhere. I think people tend to stick with what they know. You know, we're we're human beings. We're creatures of comfort. I get it. But you're paying for that loyalty. You know, you'd like to think that if you were loyal to an energy company, they'd give you cheaper deals. That's unfortunately not really the reality.

You know, speak with pocket power. Let them find you a cheaper deal. You know, I think. But also when it comes to choosing your energy, whilst the price factor is very important, also consider you know, what do you need? So some people really, you know, they need to speak to their stuff. I need to get them on the phone. Talk to them.
Customer service is quite important. You know, speak with friends who are perhaps using those suppliers and see what's out there because you know, these are just like some of the really big companies, they're also some smaller little ones too, going to jump into what's called peak energy saving schemes. So this is specific to those.
You have smart metres, but you've got your British gases, your octopus, EDF, Scottish Power, Ovo and utility who have schemes which will encourage you to use energy at different times. And they will either reward you with free energy for it. So it'll.

To be free to use on a Sunday or it will be half price. Please do check each of these individually, but you have to opt in. They don't automatically enrol you, which is another annoying thing. But also you guys have to have the choice, but the big six all have the schemes, you know, some tend to have a customer who does all.
So like you know, the 60° wash, the tumble dryer, they save it all for a Sunday because they know that that's quite a power hungry thing to do at the at home. You know, for those who have long hair, you have the everything shower, which is, you know, the hair if you know hot showers are unfortunately quite expensive as I can energy intensive thing to do.

So please do look at these schemes if you're with energy suppliers. There are also others with smaller companies, but the information is more specific to the big companies you know. Please do consider taking advantage of these schemes. I think maybe octopus also give you like prizes which you know, pretty cool.
So this will be sent through via e-mail, but please do speak to S&G if you do have any concerns regarding you know your energy bill, but also maybe you need help getting the right benefits. You need help budgeting debt advice. As David mentioned you know it could be debt of a few hundred could be debt of a few 1000.
And you might you might have reached core action. Speak to us and work with our teams. Let us help you. You've also got employment. Could be to find a job or find a better job. You know, there's a lot of resilience work they do in helping you build your confidence.

We've got a digital team, you know, helping people, you know, learn how to use smartphones. We have swathes of people in sort of, you know, elderly housing schemes, who all know how to use ChatGPT and personally, but terrified, you know, people are learning how to do a lot of this really awesome stuff on their laptops, on their smartphones.

We can help you do that and you know my role is within the energy side. So if you want to have a more individual discussion, get in contact with the details that Lorna's posted, we can have that chat and you know, as David mentioned, with LEAP, we can also do our own honoured referrals to different partners if that is what you need. Please do make yourself.

It's OK to struggle. Things are hard, you know, speak up. You know, there's no judgement. It's everything's completely tailored to you. There's no judgement. We just we just want help.