Vale of White Horse District Council
Abbey House, Abbey Close,
Abingdon, OX14 3JE
Email: comments@whitehorsedc.gov.uk
Telephone: 01235 520202

Vale of White Horse District Council

The Vale Energy Team

Vale Energy Team logo

The Vale Energy Team works to reduce fuel poverty and promote energy efficiency to the domestic sector in the Vale of White Horse.  The Vale Energy Team can offer advice in person, by phone, in writing or via e-mail - see the contact details on the right.

• How to improve the energy efficiency of your home
• Energy grants and discount schemes
• Tackling fuel poverty
• Renewable energy
• Climate change.

What is Fuel Poverty?

Fuel poverty can be defined as:

“Where a household spends more than 10% of its disposable income, excluding housing costs (rent, mortgage), to achieve a satisfactory level of warmth and comfort. (21oC in the living room and 18oC in other rooms)”

Fuel poverty comes about through the inter-play of the following factors:

• Energy inefficient (difficult to heat) properties
• Expensive to run heating systems (expensive fuel or inefficient heating systems or both)
• Low income.   

Cold homes exacerbate illnesses such as asthma and reduce resistance to respiratory infections. The extra money needed to heat an inefficient property results in an opportunity loss of having to use a larger proportion of income to keep warm, and the extra energy used to heat such homes results in greater emissions of greenhouse gases.  The Vale Affordable Warmth Steering Group aims to tackle fuel poverty in the Vale of White Horse.

The Vale Affordable Warmth Steering Group

The Vale Affordable Warmth Steering Group includes members from the Vale of White Horse District Council, The Vale Housing Association, The Warm Front Team, The South East and South West Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust, Anchor Staying Put, The Citizen’s Advice Bureau, Age Concern and The United Sustainable Energy Agency. The group works to:

• Tackle fuel poverty in the Vale
• Draw attention to the importance of energy efficiency and its implications for the health of the vulnerable
• Increase awareness of the assistance available to those in fuel poverty.

Vale Affordable Warmth Steering Group

Insulation Discount Schemes

All energy utilities are obliged to provide discounted insulation to customers as part of the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) scheme. Cocoon and the HEAT Project are two insulation discount schemes supported by the Council. Both these schemes provide free loft and cavity wall insulation for those over 70 and those in receipt of certain benefits and subsidised loft and cavity wall insulation for everybody else.