How much will our heating cost us?

One of the many ways Council officers and Councillors will try and convince residents that the installation of heat meters is to their benefit is by claiming that it will help reduce their heating and hot water costs. 

It would be wonderful if this were true. Sadly it is not. 

Back in 2019 the Council asked one of its consultants, a firm named Calford Seaden, to find out how much the residents of the Cremorne Estate would have to pay for their heating and hot water if heat meters were installed in their homes and used to bill them. 

The consultants went ahead and did just that. They worked out how much the residents of the estate would have to pay, on average, if the Council installed heat meters in their homes, used heat meters to measure how much heating and hot water they used, and then billed them for it.

They produced a report for the Council. A neighbour was kind enough to let us see, read and digest the contents of this report and, as it's pretty dry stuff, we've tried to summarise it below. 

What did they do? 

The first thing the consultants from Calford Seaden did was to work out how much energy, in the form of heating and hot water, the flats on the estate actually used. 

No one has ever measured this, so Calford Seaden had to work it out from scratch.

They sat down and estimated how much energy each flat was likely to need. They took into account the age and design of the buildings, whether they had any form of insulation, the size of individual flats and the people likely to be living in them (i.e. whether they were families with children, the elderly, the disabled, the vulnerable, and so on). 

They eventually arrived at these figures: a one-bed flat would consume around 8,000 kWh of energy per year, a two-bed flat would consume about 10,500 kWh per year and a three-bed flat would consume around 14,000 kWh per year. 

If the Cremorne Estate was a brand new housing estate these figures would seem a bit high. But the Cremorne Estate is not new. Most of the estate was built in the 1950s and there is currently little or no insulation on many of the buildings. Without constant heating many flats are extremely cold. The figures are a reasonable estimate. 

Calford Seaden then went out and had a look at how communal and district heating and hot water systems across London operated. They focused on those that used heat meters inside people's homes to measure their energy consumption and bill them for it. They made a note of what they found and used it to work out how much the residents of the Cremorne Estate were likely to pay for their heating and hot water if heat meters were installed. 

At this point we're going to cut to the chase. Calford Seaden's detailed findings and calculations are really interesting if you're into that stuff but most people aren't, so we're just going to tell you what they found instead. 

What did they find?

Firstly, let us emphasise that these calculations were originally made in 2019. 

That's before the pandemic and, more importantly, before the energy crisis that came about as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

It's five years later, the peak of the energy crisis has passed but energy costs remain stubbornly high, roughly double what they were before the pandemic, and they show little sign of going down any time soon. Ofgem has allowed the energy cap to increase twice so far this year. The direction of travel is upwards not downwards. Bear that in mind when you read what follows.

In 2019 Calford Seaden calculated that a resident living in a one-bed flat would have to pay 2.1 times (210%) what they did then, a resident living in a two-bed flat would have to pay 2.4 times (240%) what they did then, and the resident of a three-bed flat would have to pay 2.9 times (290%) what they did then. 

Let's turn those multiples into figures: 

The resident of a one bed flat would have to pay around £1,100 a year with a heat meter. 

The resident of a two bed flat would have to pay around £1,270 a year with a heat meter.

The resident of a three bed flat would have to pay around £1,500 a year with a heat meter. 

These figures would include a standing charge of about £650 a year that everyone would have to pay even if they used no heating or hot water at all. 

In 2019. 

No one on the estate was paying that kind of money for their heating and hot water in 2019. Everyone was paying, at most, half of what that one-bed flat would be paying (don't believe us? check your records). So, even before the energy crisis, everyone would be paying more than double for their heating and hot water if heat meters were installed on the estate. 

And, to no one's surprise, the Council kept that pretty quiet.  

But it gets worse. 

Energy costs have roughly doubled since 2019. So you can take the figures given above, double them and you have what you are likely to have to pay today: 

The resident of a one bed flat would have to pay around £2,200 a year. 

The resident of a two bed flat would have to pay around £2,540 a year.

The resident of a three bed flat would have to pay around £3,000 a year. 

And these figures would include that hefty standing charge, originally estimated at £650 a year, that is also likely to have doubled, which everyone would have to pay even if they use no heating or hot water at all. 

Where does that leave us? 

Well for a start we can treat the claim that heat meters will save you money as what it is: a con. 

No one living on the estate will save any money if heat meters are installed. The opposite will be the case: residents will pay a lot more than they are paying today. 

Sadly, it gets even worse. 

A large proportion of the Cremorne's Estate's population is elderly, or vulnerable, or has young children. These residents spend a significant amount of their time at home. 

Many elderly residents suffer from complex medical conditions. The health of these residents will deteriorate if they can't keep their homes warm. Their health will suffer and they risk losing their independence. 

Many residents have limited incomes. Many elderly residents only have a state pension and already depend on pension credits. Some families already depend on local food banks. 

They are the ones that will end up paying much more for their heating and hot water than they do today. They'll have to pay the hefty standing charge, and then they'll have to pay for the heating and hot water they use. And before you know it they're facing the extremely steep increases in heating and hot water costs Calford Seaden predicted - up to 300%.

Remember, heating and hot water costs are not covered by Housing Benefit or Universal Credit. But the Council will still expect residents to find the money to pay for their heating and hot water from somewhere.

What will happen if they simply don't have the money to pay for the heating and hot water they need? They'll either run up a large debt to the Council or have to turn off their heating and refrain from using any hot water and suffer the consequences to their health and wellbeing. 

We've done the sums. A resident in this situation will have to reduce their heating and hot water usage by more than 75% to try and ensure that they pay no more than they do today. They'll go from being able to heat their home properly to only being able to afford to have the heating on for five or six hours a day at most. For those who spend much of their time at home, they'll be spending that time in a rather cold flat. 

Does this sound even remotely reasonable to you?  

How can Council officers and Councillors be so cruel as to inflict this on our most vulnerable residents? What have these residents done to deserve this ? 

But this IS what the Council is proposing. They know who lives on the estate. They know what will happen to them and the harm it will inevitably cause. Do any of them care? 

Our Councillors are: 

• Gerard Hargreaves (cllr.gerard.hargreaves@rbkc.gov.uk), 
• Laura Burns (cllr.laura.burns@rbkc.gov.uk) and 
• Sonia Zvedeniuk (cllr.sonia.zvedeniuk@rbkc.gov.uk). 

We should all let them know how we feel by emailing them. 

Heating Phase 2 Key Decision

A Key Decision for Councillor Sof McVeigh, the Lead Member for Housing Management, Housing Safety and Building Homes, has been brought to our attention.

It is Key Decision KD1010888. 

You can find it on the Council website here: KD1010888. It looks like this:

The Key Decision is described as "covering the contract award in connection with the procurement of a contractor to deliver the Phase 2 domestic heating and hot water works and building fabric works at Cremorne Estate in the Chelsea Riverside Ward". 

In plain English that means that it is about the appointment of a contractor to carry out the heating works inside homes on the Cremorne Estate.

The decision is dated the 27 November 2024. That is the date that it became a matter of public record. The expected decision date is given as "Monday, 25 August 2025". That means the Council expect to have appointed a contractor to carry out the works before that date. 

If there was any doubt as to the Council's plans then this Key Decision eliminates them. 

This is happening. The Council DOES plan for there to be people in your home ripping out your existing radiators and all the pipework for both the heating and the hot water. 

The disruption to you, your household and your home will be massive. The Council will try to downplay it. They are misleading you and everyone else. 

They have done the same on other estates. They downplay the disruption works will cause. The disruption caused is then as bad as residents feared. The Council count on it simply being too late for anyone to do anything about it. Does this sound particularly "caring" to you? 

Now, for the obvious question is: if the Council expect to have appointed a contractor by the 25th of August 2025 when do they plan to consult all of the estate's residents? When do they plan to serve Section 20 notices on leaseholders? When do they plan to tell everyone about the 300% increase in heating and hot water costs that will result? 

As is often the case the Key Decision claims that resident consultation has already taken place. It says: "The residents on Cremorne Estate are aware of the Phase 2 works that are now following Phase 1" and that "The project team shall continue with resident consultation and engagement from phase 1 into phase 2". 

As far as we know there has been no meaningful resident consultation or information about any these works. There was little or no meaningful consultation about phase 1 (we would argue so little as to be equivalent to none), and there has been no meaningful consultation to date about phase 2. And there is no sign that the project team have any meaningful consultation planned any time soon.

Is this yet another Council Key Decision full of porkies?

To make matters worse our local Councillors have known about this project for many years. They have told us nothing and appear to have consented to our most vulnerable residents suffering the consequences. These are many of the same Councillors that wanted to demolish us.