Warm Home Prescription: Bringing together health and energy

Warm Home Prescription is a pioneering new service, invented by Energy Systems Catapult, bringing together two previously unrelated sectors – health and energy. The aim of the service is to solve the problem of vulnerable people being unable to afford their energy bills and being forced to turn down, or turn off, their heating, where it could be the choice between life or death; cold homes claim approximately 10,000 lives per year and cost the NHS in England around £860 million every year.

 

The Warm Home Prescription provides support to people with a health condition made worse by the cold in the form of credit on their energy bills and helps them improve the energy efficiency of their homes – providing a long-term solution to their winter woes by reducing the energy needed to get their home warm.

 

Following a successful 30 home, small-scale trial with NHS Gloucestershire, in winter 2022-23 we scaled-up support to 1,000 people across England and Scotland. Our aim is to understand if the service could scale and provide the evidence needed to drive change in how the health and energy sectors support people to keep warm and well at home now and in a low carbon future.

 

As a result of our small-scale trial in Gloucestershire, they have extended the service to support over 100 households in 2022-23. Whilst our large-scale trial is still underway in England and Scotland, the Scottish Government have said they will explore doing Warm Home Prescription nationally and there has been widespread interest from health and energy organisations in other areas.

 

Energy Systems Catapult has designed the service and the digital solution that supports it to be easy for others around the country to adopt this winter so we can keep as many people warm and well at home as possible.

 

Find out more: es.catapult.org.uk/project/warm-home-prescription/