Issue - meetings

1.    Approve the strategy (Appendix A, with Appendices C and D as annexes) and action plan (Appendix B).

2.    Note the investment required to deliver the strategy, and the current funding gap that exists for future implementation.

3.    Note the links to other developing strategies in the Council, and the dependencies that exist because of this.

Councillor Wesley Harcourt introduced the report seeking to approve a strategy to reduce fuel poverty, with the cost of heating homes being one of the major factors in the cost-of-living crisis. This strategy also linked to climate change as energy efficiency and retrofitting of homes cloud impact on carbon footprint.

Councillor Rebecca Harvey added that addressing fuel poverty was critical to ensure that all residents could afford to heat their homes reasonably and help with their cost-of-living.

Councillor Adrian Pascu-Tulbure commended the strategy tacking fuel poverty and asked what specific energy efficiency measures the Council was considering.

Councillor Wesley Harcourt replied that this strategy would concentrate initially in getting all the data to target the right groups of people on the right parts of the borough. It set out the route to reducing fuel poverty across the borough through a variety of different support mechanisms, including information on the grants available, and linked to other strategies addressing these areas. This strategy focused on private housing as there was a separate strategy targeting retrofitting the Council’s own social housing stock.

The Leader added that the Council had spent over £100 million on retrofitting the social housing stock; however private houses were a different matter. Part of this strategy was to map each neighbourhood with the intention of setting out cooperative energy companies using solar power and heat pumps to generate electricity to a whole neighbourhood.

AGREED UNANIMOUSLY BY THE CABINET MEMBERS:

1.    Approve the strategy (Appendix A, with Appendices C and D as annexes) and action plan (Appendix B).

2.    Note the investment required to deliver the strategy, and the current funding gap that exists for future implementation.

3.    Note the links to other developing strategies in the Council, and the dependencies that exist because of this.