Argyll News: Government extends scheme to help people struggling … [link to post]

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The real way to help people with their energy bills is to give them more money so they can pay them. I would think the majority of people qualifying for the assistance are elderly. It isn’t their fault that their homes are energy inefficient, they were built long ago. If they start the convoluted process of getting help through this scheme, they will be heavily stressed and have their homes and lives severely disrupted.

My neighbour had loft insulation, a multi fuel stove and central heating installed after a traumatic battle with the assistance system. The job took months. The workmen were complete strangers from more than a hundred miles away, rough and uncaring. The installation was shoddy. She was left with damaged decor and exposed pipes from floor to ceiling in the sitting room. The system didn’t work, the pipes leaked, damaging ceilings carpets and furniture. After much complaining to the administrators of the scheme, eventually people came back to fix things – they didn’t.

She was left traumatised by the massive disruption, uncaring attitudes of the workmen (whom she couldn’t choose for herself), damaged decor, and is now a slave to an inefficient multi fuel stove that she doesn’t have the energy, and can’t afford, to feed, and which only really heats one room.

Those in fuel poverty need money to pay the bills. Most are elderly. It won’t be many years before their energy inefficient houses are sold to new owners, who will most certainly install insulation and more efficient heating as a matter of course – at their own expense. It could well be cheaper to help with the bills of the elderly for a short time rather than fund all these energy efficiency upgrades, which will in the not too distant future, benefit the next owner of the house who could well have paid for them anyway.

I am a pensioner. My house is all electric. It has thin concrete walls. The roof is well insulated and it’s mostly double glazed. The annual council tax and electricity bills come to more than my state pension! I am officially in a state of fuel poverty.

The thought of the total disruption and sort of damage my neighbour endured – for little actual gain – is just too traumatic for me to bear. So, I will again spend the winter in one room of my house, with no heat except in extremis. Bundled with clothes, sitting under a sleeping bag and cuddling a hot water bottle. That is the reality of these badly thought out ‘help’ schemes. Our parsimonious Mr. Brown can be proud of the amount of money he is saving the tax payer (of whom I am one).

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Argyll News: Government extends scheme to help people struggling …: draftproofing;; insulation for hot and co.. [link to post]

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