Warm Front

FREE grants to keep your home warm next winter from the WARM FRONT TEAM
Warm up for Winter - prepare your home for the Winter months

The sunshine may be out now but can you remember how cold you felt in your home last winter? Next Winter seems a long way off but it will be here before you can say Jack Frost!!

If you are a homeowner or rent from a private landlord and receive an income or disability-related benefit, you may qualify to have your home insulated FREE. Depending on your existing heating, you may even qualify for extra heating and, if you are over 60 and receive an income-related benefit, you could even qualify for a full central heating system, all installed at no cost to you.

The Warm Front programme (formerly known as the Home Energy Efficiency Scheme or HEES - see P21 of Spring Newsletter 2002, Issue 33) is specifically aimed at those households who receive certain income or disability-related benefits, who may need help to be warm and comfortable in their homes.

What's the catch? There isn't one. This help is available from the Warm Front Team, a Government-funded initiative, who will arrange for the work to be carried out. Warm Front grants are designed to improve the quality of your life by keeping more heat in the home so that you and your family will be warmer. You'll be more comfortable and will be less at risk from cold-related illnesses.

The grants are completely free up to the value of:

Warm Front - £700 maximum. If main source of heating is:

Gas room heaters
Closed solid fuel fires
Electric storage heaters (off-peak)
Central heating systems from mains gas, oil or solid fuel

or - £1500 maximum. If main source of heating is:

On-peak electricity
Bottled gas
Paraffin
Open solid fuel fire

Warm Front Plus - £2500 maximum: Available only to over 60's in receipt of an income-related benefit.

What could Warm Front provide?

Insulation Measures:

Loft insulation
Cavity Wall insulation
Low energy lamps
Draught proofing to windows and doors *
Hot water tank jacket *

* These will be carried out when a main insulation measure is being done. The only exception to this is when a property has six or more openings to be draught-proofed; this can then be carried out as a separate measure.

Heating Measures:
Gas room heaters
Electric storage heaters
High efficiency solid fuel fire units
Electric duel immersion water heaters

What could Warm Front Plus provide?

All of the above and, where applicable, a mains gas boiler and radiators.

To find out more about the Warm Front, please call FREE on 0800 952 0600 or write to TXU WARM Front Ltd, FREEPOST, ANG305, Ipswich, IP1 2ZY

ADDENDUM:
Following the article in our Summer 2002 Newsletter one of our members has informed us that Warm Front in Wales will only supply either electric storage heaters or mains gas. However, many rural areas in Wales are not on mains gas and long power cuts pose quite a problem. The Wales Office will not supply heaters for propane or oil as both these fuels are unregulated and suppliers can set their own charge for them.
We have been in touch with Warm Front who advise us that they receive similar pleas from their rural customers but EAGA are, in fact, the managing agents for Wales.
The Warm Front scheme does not currently include oil or gas for heating purposes and this 'rule' is set by DEFRA. However, it would appear that, in certain circumstances, solid fuel may be available BUT there are several grey areas here and the rules of the scheme can become blurred and sometimes open to interpretation. Warm Front do feed back these types of issues to DEFRA but there is no guarantee that they will change the eligibility and measures to accommodate such cases in the future.
Any member who is experiencing difficulties with the scheme in Wales should contact EAGA direct, providing them with your name, house number and postcode so that they can check the job on their system.
Telephone between 8.30 am and 5.30 pm, Monday to Friday on 0800 316 2801 or, for the hard of hearing, the minicom number is 0800 072 0156