Community initiatives in the utility sector are becoming much more ambitious. The past decade has seen energy and water retailers move from conventional corporate social responsibility activities such staff volunteering and charitable donations, to diverse and creative schemes that have a significant impact on different sections of society.
Key to this success is the community and voluntary sector. Dig deeper and you will find that some of the most powerful schemes have third sector partners helping the big corporates to reach local people.
Total Gas and Power’s Total Green Schools Awards, for instance, demonstrate the capacity of such a voluntary sector partnership. In the past 12 months alone the oil and gas company has worked with 54,000 people, most of them children, to preserve their natural environment. Its awards programme encourages UK primary aged pupils to study environmental issues in a cross curricular way with the aim that they will develop a long-term awareness and interest in these issues.
Central to making Total’s scheme work is the Young People’s Trust for the Environment (YPTE), a charity that encourages young people’s understanding of the natural world. YPTE runs the award scheme, using its experience of inspiring schools, teachers and children in environmental education to make a success of
the programme and link it creatively with the national curriculum.
Another example is United Utilities’ partnership with charity Groundwork on United Futures. This initiative funds new projects in areas being dug up and disrupted by the water company. The programme focuses on neighbourhoods suffering high levels of deprivation and varies from community clean-ups to creating play areas for children.
United Utilities’ partner on the scheme, Groundwork, has been helping local people enhance their neighbourhoods for the past 30 years. Describing itself as “the community charity with a green heart”, it co-ordinates thousands of projects every year that improve local patches of land. Again, its experience of reaching local people and stakeholders, particularly in deprived areas, and engaging them to establish successful public space improvement projects is essential.
In the past seven years, United Futures has seen work worth £4.5 million carried out on 143 projects, something that would not have been possible without Groundwork’s local knowledge and networks.
Npower’s Health Through Warmth scheme is another case in point. Twelve years ago it set up a community initiative giving small grants to people with cold-related illnesses so they could have heating equipment installed, fixed or replaced. So far, 75,000 vulnerable individuals have been supported to keep their homes warm through improvements such as new gas fires, window draught-proofing and loft insulation.
In 2011 Npower began a partnership with housing charity Foundations Independent Living Trust (Filt). Filt now receives around £200,000 funding from the energy company every year, which it distributes via its Health Through Warmth hardship fund to people most in need.
Filt, established in 2002, was chosen by Npower because it already supports vulnerable homeowners and private sector tenants to live independently and safely in their own homes. The charity has direct access to the national network of more than 170 not-for-profit home improvement agencies and handypersons – local, trusted organisations across England that help more than 200,000 enquirers every year who are older, disabled or on low incomes to repair and adapt their homes. This is exactly Npower’s target audience for Health Through Warmth.
As well as organising adaptations and repairs, home improvement agencies and handypersons often help service users with benefits checks and applications for financial support. This gives them an awareness of a person’s living environment and their income, putting them in a unique position to identify those most at need of funding.
The problem is that those most at risk from fuel poverty and cold-related illnesses often live on the margins and can be hard to reach. They might be socially isolated, mistrusting energy providers and health professionals, ignoring leaflets on how to keep warm and resistant to changing their behaviour around fuel use.
Home improvement agency caseworkers and handypersons build close relationships with these socially isolated people. Their regular visits, detailed case work, free help with problems around the house and support to find funding mean that vulnerable people trust them. Vulnerable individuals are guided through recommendations, including applying to the Health Through Warmth Hardship fund when appropriate.
As a result, Npower’s partnership with Filt has given it unprecedented access to thousands of vulnerable homeowners who may be eligible for support through the scheme but were previously hard to reach. During 2012, Filt distributed £239,000 in charitable grants, helping more than 800 households. The charity levered in an additional £270,000 from other charitable sources to support vulnerable clients.
This is such a snapshot of the community work that many utility companies are delivering with charities. But without these third sector partners, large-scale corporates may struggle to truly engage with the local communities they supply.
Voluntary organisations are well rooted in these communities and have established relationships with a wide range of local bodies and agencies. They know how to navigate local agendas and are aware of the right buttons to press in order to engage with neighbourhoods They are nimble, with local networks working on the ground all year round that can be quickly mobilised to deliver projects.
The support work delivered by third sector organisations means they are appreciated and trusted by local people, particularly the hardest to reach groups in deprived areas or those individuals who are excluded or isolated from mainstream society.
The government is beginning to recognise the reach of the third sector with the Department of Health’s Warm Homes Healthy People cash funding charities such as Filt to reduce excess winter deaths through national support projects delivered by local networks such as home improvement agencies.
Major funding cuts mean that charities are all looking at other income sources to maintain their services. Helping big businesses such as energy and water providers to imaginatively and effectively deliver their corporate social responsibility projects could be a win-win solution for all sides.
Stephen Burke is trustee of charity Foundations Independent Living Trust, director of United for All Ages and director of www.goodcareguide.co.uk
This article first appeared in Utility Week’s print edition of 1st March 2013.
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