Lid is lifted on human cost of fuel poverty at Highland gathering
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CLIMATE change initiatives will never be embraced while people in the Highlands are still living in homes so poorly built they leak heat, an outspoken Inverness councillor told a major convention on green energy this week.
Margaret Davidson said many people living in outlying areas had to drive highly-polluting 4x4 vehicles in order to get to work.
Speaking at a workshop at Highland Council’s second Carbon Clever Conference in Inverness on Monday, the councillor for Aird and Loch Ness said people hit by rural poverty could not possibly identify with the kinds of issues being debated upon by more than 100 delegates in the council’s Glenurquhart Road chamber - because they were too busy trying to get by.
"You need to make yourself real to people," she said.
"In rural areas people often live in poorly-built, poorly-insulated houses.
"They need a 4x4 or they can’t get to work, and usually there are two of those in each household because both people have to work now to pay the mortgage."
Councillor Davidson said home energy efficiency programmes were far too complicated and often did not work for private householders.
"It’s Byzantine," she said. "Quite a lot of the complications come from civil servants serving in Scotland so the UK and the Scottish governments can share the blame. We need to get some of the pressure groups here so we are all speaking from the same page."
George Baxter, Scottish and Southern Energy’s head of development strategy, said drastic measures were needed to make homes in the Highlands - and the rest of the UK - energy efficient.
He said: "I think the state of housing in this country is just unbelievable and there are a lot of people who are struggling. My own personal view is - and I tend to get laughed at when I say this - but I have suggested just putting an army general in charge. If we are really serious about tackling climate change we would take a military approach. Right now, there’s a piecemeal approach to these things."
The Scottish Housing Quality Standards capital programme is upgrading energy efficiency in all council houses. The proportion of the council’s housing stock meeting the energy efficiency standard in 2012/13 was 80 per cent, a significant improvement from 47.9 per cent in 2011/12.
Labour councillor Roger Saxon for Thurso disagreed with a "one-size-fits-all" policy.
He said: "Nairnshire might be a warmer place to live than Aviemore. We shouldn’t have a standard policy for the Highlands."
The conversation turned to fuel prices.
Families in the north of Scotland pay 2p more per unit than elsewhere in the UK, and grid operator SSE is coming under increasing pressure to reduce the surcharge.
The firm insists however that the pricing is an issue for regulator Ofgem.
Nick Gubbins, chief executive, Community Energy Scotland, said some communities could draw their supplies from local schemes, such as the community-led Kingussie Hydro Project, which will supply electricity direct to Kingussie Golf Club.
He explained that complex licensing laws made it difficult for communities to draw electricity directly from much larger electricity-generating projects, however the matter was being addressed.
Mr Baxter said the rules and regulations were "frustrating" for all energy companies to have to follow.
Dingwall and Seaforth Lib-Dem councillor Angela MacLean said fuel poverty was common in several council housing estates in Dingwall and Conon Bridge.
"As a councillor you go and you visit people and there are some houses I visit and I come out and I could just cry. I know of one man who sits in his car with his newspapers and his heating on because it’s easier for him to keep warm and he gets to see people and he can chat to them when they’re passing."
Helen Houston, community development contractor from the Kyle of Sutherland Development Trust, told the conference she believed fuel poverty affected 60 per cent of residents in the rural north.
She said: "Recently members of our team had been out visiting people in the community and they came back crying. They told me they’d been out to visit an old lady who couldn’t afford to put on her heating. She was wearing three lots of clothing and they’d never seen something like this before. A woman in her eighties who couldn’t afford to heat her own home."
The conference, now in its second year, was chaired by Drew Hendry, council leader.Richard Lochhead MSP, cabinet secretary for rural affairs and the environment was among the keynote speakers.Mr Lochhead said: "I was thinking as I was driving her today with my children that by the time they are my age many of the initiatives that many of you sitting here are working on will just be the norm, and common-place. A whole lot of changes are going to be happening in the next few decades and you, the people in this room, are the pioneers in terms of getting the right changes in place to protect society and the rest of the world."Highland Council aims to have a carbon-neutral Inverness in a low carbon Highlands by 2025.The local authority has committed a capital budget of £1 million per annum into its Carbon Clever fund every year.In 2013/14 this has been allocated to the Millburn Road Cycling corridor, LED street lighting upgrades across the Highlands and towards establishing a Low Carbon Institute with the University of Highlands and Islands, plus a number of active travel projects.More than £400,000 has been spent on energy efficient street lights.Council leader Drew Hendry told the conference more than 50 groups were signed up to the council’s Carbon Clever Commitment.Ross and Cromarty councillor Maxine Smith talked about a recently-unveiled £200,000 Carbon Clever Community Grant Fund for community groups that need financial backing for local carbon-saving projects to support the Carbon Clever initiative.She said: "We hope that this will empower local communities to take local action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Individual communities are well-placed to identify initiatives for tackling climate change which are relevant and important to them at a local level and the grant fund will help to encourage and support them in their aims whilst also supporting Carbon Clever targets."Application forms are available via the council’s website.
