FREE Wirral Lifelong Learning Courses by Energy Projects Plus

Do you know a Wirral community or group of residents who want to save money on their energy bills?

Energy Projects Plus can help! We have funding to offer Lifelong Learning Workshops for Wirral residents. The aim of these courses is to save learners money and help them address any issues or answer any questions they may have about home energy.

Our qualified tutor will come to your venue with all the materials needed to train your community.

Here is an outline of our most popular course:

“Taking Control of your Energy Bills”

2-Hour Workshop

Learning Outcomes:
•Understanding the energy crisis, energy tariffs and payment methods
•Identify recommendations and money saving opportunities on your home’s Energy Performance Certificate
•Understanding your Energy Bill, is a smart meter right for you?
•List the “Top Tips” for reducing household energy bills, which could save learners up to £581 a year!

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**NEW** “Saving Money On Energy” 1-Hour Workshop!!

Just an hour to spare? If so, we can cut right to the chase and focus on the list of “Top Tips” to save energy!

Let our tutor and trained energy advisor can go through the home, room by room, to give energy saving tips and advice to bring down energy costs by up to £581 a year!

Learning Outcomes:
•Top tips so save money on home energy

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These courses are free for Wirral residents, funded by Wirral Lifelong Learning. Courses are available to book Mondays or Tuesdays through June 2023.

With energy bills at an all time high, it is important to understand what we can do to reduce our energy use. We can’t do much these days about the price per kilowatt hour (kWh), but what we can do is learn how to be more savvy!

If you have a venue and a group of 5 or more residents interested in saving money on their energy bills, we would like to offer you a course.

Funding and availability is limited.

For more information on offering a Lifelong Learning Energy Course to your community email melanie.nolan@epplus.org

Melanie

EPPlus Do Events!

Do you have an event coming up? Energy Projects Plus are delighted to be able to serve our community by attending events like coffee mornings, drop in events, fun days, information sessions, environmental awareness events, conferences, open days, or any other event you may think of!

We can set up a stall giving advice, deliver a presentation, hold a 1-2 hour workshop. We can bring a long some free lightbulbs or even showcase our electric company car!

We offer advice on subjects such as: • fuel poverty • energy crisis • climate action • energy efficiency • renewable energy • saving water • damp and mould • help with energy bills • affordable warmth • smart meter advice • home energy and EPC’s

If you have an event coming up and would like Energy Project Plus to attend you can email all the details including date, time and type of event to events@epplus.org

Wirral Digital Inclusion

The TechKnow project is designed to empower Wirral residents to ‘do digital’ their own way, safely. Energy Projects Plus is ready to help our community make sense of technology and resources related to saving energy, saving water, and reducing their carbon footprint.

Energy Projects Plus has put together series of ‘Digital Drop-In Events’ to help give residents the support they need to make their digital life that little bit easier.

These events are running until the end of the month:

Monday 10:00am – 11:00am @ Open Door Charity, Bloom Building, 3 Abbey Close, Birkenhead, CH41 5FQ

Tuesday 2:00pm – 3:00pm @ The Community Village, New Chester Road, Rock Ferry, Wirral, CH42 1LE

To help us promote these events to those offline, please download and print out our poster: EPPlus TechKnow Poster Jan-Mar 2023

We are seeking new Wirral venues to hold Digital inclusion events. To enquire email melanie.nolan@epplus.org

Damp and Mould

In light of the tragic death of Awaab Ishak in Rochdale, which the coroner has linked with the presence of mould in the property, Energy Projects Plus is keen to work with partners to try to prevent a similar case from happening within Merseyside and Cheshire. To aid this, we have added “damp/mould” to the list of items on our General Referral form, here: www.epplus.org.uk/referrals so you can refer clients to us for help with damp/mould, even if they don’t need any further advice or support from us.

We have also decided these cases should be prioritised, and therefore we now have 3 priority groups:

•Vulnerable residents with no access to heat
•Low-income prepay customers at risk of self-disconnection
•Vulnerable residents living in homes with damp/mould

Wherever possible we will attempt initial contact with clients in any of these priority groups within a working day following receipt of referral. Referrals for clients not in any of these groups will be processed in date order, but there is likely to be a wait of several weeks before we’ll be able to speak with them.

What we can do

•We have advice on the topic of damp and mould, that anybody can access and share, here: www.epplus.org.uk/advice
•All of our energy advisors are trained and qualified to detect and identify the most common forms of damp, suggest possible causes, and provide recommendations.
•We can deliver advice and recommendations over the phone, or during a home visit. Please note, residents don’t need to keep mould to show us, they can take a photo to share with us, but should always wipe mould away quickly – preferably utilising a mould cleaner.
•We can create an “observation report” following a home visit, providing the resident with a written record of what we saw on the day. This can be shared by the resident with their landlord, where appropriate.

What we can’t do

•We do not have funding available to repair roofs, to fix leaky plumbing, or to repair external drainpipes. Referrals to us in these cases wouldn’t be appropriate as the resident is likely to know the cause of the damp, and we can’t assist with the solution.
•If a landlord is already involved in dealing with a damp/mould issue, there’s no need to refer the case to us as we’re likely to come to the same conclusions as the landlord.

Money Saving Expert Energy Announcement

As Martin Lewis advises here, bills may still be less affordable from April for a few months, as the £67 monthly reduction will cease.

But the current prediction is a 20% drop in July.

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April as planned. We just wanted to give you a quick update on the energy market. The good news is the Government has confirmed it won’t be hiking bills by 20% from

MoneySavingExpert and Martin wrote to the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt asking him to postpone the rise, which would have taken a typical bill on the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) – the state-subsidised rate almost everyone is paying right now – up to £3,000/year.

Our letter was backed by more than 110 charities and in today’s Budget the Chancellor confirmed the typical bill for someone paying by direct debit under the EPG would now stay at £2,500/year until July.

However, there will still be a rise for everyone in April as the Government’s £66/£67 a month energy support is ending. And what you actually pay will depend on your usage, where you live and your payment method.

To see the impact on your bills, check out our updated ‘What will I pay from April?’ calculator.

Bills are expected to drop in July

Energy bills are currently set by a combination of the Ofgem Price Cap and the EPG. The Price Cap is based on wholesale prices and sets a limit on what firms can charge for each unit of gas and electricity, with the Government discounting these rates if the Cap is above the EPG level of £2,500/year.

With wholesale prices falling rapidly, analysts at Cornwall Insight are predicting the Price Cap will be around £2,000/year for a typical household from July, so the EPG will no longer apply, and we can expect to see lower bills.

See Martin’s video explainer for what’s going to happen to bills in the next few months.

We are also hearing murmurings that fixed energy deals could be coming back in the near future, so we will be in touch then with an update and what you need to know.

The MSE Cheap Energy Club team

CASE STUDY
by Katie

“When myself and a colleague were attending an event in Liscard Cherry Tree Centre, a gentleman approached our table with quite a pessimistic demeaner. He said he felt isolated and abandoned by the governments assistance for households during COVID due to not being in receipt of benefits. The gentleman said he felt like he was drowning with the cost of living and couldn’t find help anywhere. I explained to him about the Wirral Council Direct Debit support fund and that the criteria didn’t stipulate that the claimant needed to be in receipt of benefits. Since the event the gentleman has sent me the relevant information and an application has been submitted to Wirral council for 6 months Direct Debit support that will offer the gentleman a total of £1100 if approved. The client was extremely grateful for any help at all as he had reached out to organisations previously and been turned away.”