MANY Scots see the human impact of the energy crisis as unprecedented. For many, it is all too familiar.
Last Friday my Wise Group colleagues gathered government, industry, charity, and academic leaders to find a route out of the nightmare of fuel poverty for millions in Scotland. Who helps and who pays? That is what we tried to crack.
We called this discussion with an extreme urgency and sought a frank exploration of challenges and solutions. “Stay at home”. “Get a vaccine”. What is our response to this similarly ubiquitous civic challenge?
Those working directly with households who already faced extreme fuel poverty are the canaries in the coal mine. One of the people we support worked in advanced engineering until an injury in 2019 lost him his job. Now, he survives on just £63 a week, and was spending more than 25 perhaps of his income on energy when he first encountered the Wise Group. He laughed about draughts so strong they would fling doors open, but the laughter stopped as he spoke about the rejection or false signposting he faced as he sought support from providers, authorities, and debt collection agencies.
Our antidote is a robust relational mentorship that counteracts the misplaced shame and blame of fuel poverty which cuts through the noise and sets people up with relevant securities, setting off a domino effect of other benefits from employment to educational outcomes and improved mental health. We know that because of the impact we have had. Our first attempt at looking at the Social Return on Investment of our work indicates that for every £1 spent on our fuel poverty mentoring we create £44 of extended social value. Income maximisation, increased awareness, improved accessibility to services, increased health and wellbeing, improved, more energy-efficient heating systems, improved educational outcomes for customers’ children, a reduction in health costs, less truancy.
Amplify that onto a scale of tens of thousands, it’s possible that cruel experience will be felt by more than half of the population this winter. The figure for pensioners is even more horrifying. Like the pandemic, the scale of this crisis is universal. The response to the crisis must be universal and treated with wartime seriousness as droves die when others idle.
Those falling deeper into poverty must receive intensive, one-to-one support to address the immediate hardship, and when ready, be given the tools to build the skills and knowledge necessary to escape poverty for good. The new vulnerable must be taught to maximise their finances and cut off the development of dangerous habits which lead to a spiral of poverty.
Our collective and individual Relationship with Energy consumption needs to change. It is always more challenging to find solutions than problems, but Scotland has risen to crises before, and when it has it required the support of a cross section of society to succeed. As we face the challenge, we can recognise that, as with the pandemic, there is no them and us in fuel poverty. Then as now, it is up to us to sort it out.
Sean Duffy is chief executive of the Wise Group
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