Changeworks is bringing together community partners from across the Highlands to help remove barriers to home retrofit and improve living conditions for householders.
The Highland Energy Community Partnership (HECP) aims to overcome barriers to home decarbonisation and fuel poverty alleviation in remote areas.
The partnership, which is funded by a £1.5million National Lottery grant, will help improve energy efficiency in the home and empower communities to move towards a greener future.
This grant comes from the Climate Action Fund, a £100 million commitment over 10 years from The National Lottery Community Fund to support communities across the UK to take action on climate change and involve more people in climate action. This forms part of one of the funder’s four key missions in its 2030 strategy, ‘It starts with community’ – supporting communities to be environmentally sustainable.
The project will support communities that have historically struggled to access support and advice around energy efficiency. This is a significant issue for rural Scotland, where 47% of households are in fuel poverty.
The five year innovative partnership brings together six community partners from the Black Isle, Contin, Garve, Ullapool, Gairloch and Coigach alongside The Highland Council, University of the Highlands and Islands and Home Energy Scotland.
Partners include Coigach Community Development Company, Lochbroom & Ullapool Community Trust, GALE, The Garve & District Development Company and Contin, Jamestown and Tarvie Projects and Transition Black Isle.
Promoting environmentally friendly energy use
Householders will be upskilled in energy saving and home retrofit awareness and adopt environmentally friendly energy use behaviours.
Activity to support this will be delivered by community-based energy officers through one-to-one and group awareness and advice sessions, utilising existing community networks and events.
Over the five year partnership, 20,000 householders will engage through websites, newsletters, social media, and group events. A further 5,400 people will be provided with one-to-one energy advice.
This will lead to an increased number of householders understanding how to use energy more efficiently and a reduction in carbon emissions due to behaviour change.
Supporting communities to retrofit their homes
Over the five years, 900 households will be empowered and supported to retrofit their homes. They will be supported by the project to identify energy efficient retrofit measures suitable for their homes and be provided with a home retrofit plan.
Householders will then receive support to navigate and apply for grants and funding schemes to undertake work, as well as to identify and remove any barriers to work taking place.
Householders will also be supported with installer liaison during and after any retrofit work. Community partners will also seek to establish coordinated area-based approaches to retrofit work. Rolling out works across an area will achieve economies of scale, benefitting householders, installers and staff working on the project.
Sharing learning that supports rural retrofit activity beyond project area
Supported by the partnership, the University of the Highlands and Islands, and the Highland Council, Changeworks will build connections across rural communities in Scotland to ensure a scale up of retrofit in rural areas.
This work will utilise existing networks and connections to share knowledge on how to generate and demonstrate the demand for local installers and how to support householders throughout their retrofit journey. There will be a particular focus on supporting those most vulnerable to the impacts of homes with poor energy efficiency.
The HECP launch event was held in Dingwall on the Wednesday 28th October and brought together all members of the project as well as the people from these communities. They discussed projected activities for 2026, each energy officer gave a community overview, and a project reporting framework discussion.