Providing energy efficiency advice to your residents

If you’re offering energy saving advice, it’s important to make sure the savings and facts are up-to-date, accurate, easy to understand and in an accessible format that is suitable for your audience.

So that residents don’t become more anxious, it’s important to relay the message that if they’re struggling to pay their energy bills there’s help available.

Local authorities tell us it can be challenging and time consuming to support residents with energy efficiency when they’re not energy experts. Our consultants can make this easy for you with messaging, statistics and facts to support energy saving campaigns.

Make sure you understand your residents, their homes and what their energy needs are and plan a campaign that can help them save money.

It’s worth using resident geographic data and home Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) data to help narrow down households which might be more vulnerable to high energy bills or households suitable for specific energy efficiency interventions.

Include energy savings tips in your existing newsletters, social media or website. You can get ideas from our Energywire newsletter or suggest your residents sign up to it too. You can also signpost to a whole range of information on our website in your newsletter and on social media. To get started, see our energy saving hacks that can help your residents

We also have a domestic home energy bulletin that offers easy-to-use facts and savings designed to support your advice. It has up-to-date and referenced energy and carbon savings that you can use in online communications.

You might also like to think about creating your own online energy advice hub with tips or online tools to help your residents live more sustainably. If you want to increase resident engagement and give them clear ways to save energy in each and every room of the house, you could give them access to our Energy Efficiency Advice Tool, putting the potential costs and savings right in front of them.

Calculators are also a useful tool. Martin Lewis has a great webtool to help residents understand their rising costs.

Make sure digital isn’t your only avenue when you’re talking to residents. Some audiences might be digitally excluded, so don’t overlook more traditional ways of communicating. For example, leaflets, free merchandise or community engagement events can still be very effective.

You can use housing stock data to understand which households could benefit from your support and send targeted support and information leaflets to those areas.

If you have trained support staff or advisors that to talk to your residents over the phone or online, you could train them to give energy advice to residents, enhancing the service they provide.

There are various energy training courses available, including our own energy advice training service that can provide frontline staff with an understanding of what bespoke energy efficiency advice and financial support signposting they need.

Quick and effective energy efficiency is key. You could give residents some tips on:

1. Heating their home

Taking control of heating could save households lots of energy and money. Installing a room thermostat, a programmer and thermostatic radiator valves, and giving residents advice on how to use them effectively, is a good place to start.

2. Reducing heat loss

Small fixes around the home can add up to significant savings on energy bills. If your residents want to keep energy bills low, installing or topping up insulation in the home, or draught-proofing, will help significantly.

3. Using energy efficient products

Switching to energy efficient appliances can be a great way to save money on bills in the long term.

4. Getting financial support

Many UK residents are worried about their rising energy costs and would like to do something about it, but they’re not sure where to start. Direct them to financial support that may be available to them based on their situation or household.