Decision details

Community Energy Efficiency Fund

Decision status: Recommendations Approved

Is Key decision?: No

Is subject to call in?: Yes

Decisions:

A report by the Director of Law, HR and Asset Management provided an update for Members on the Community Energy Efficiency Fund and sought approval to amending the criteria for applications.

 

The grant was in support of the Council’s goal to reduce Wirral’s carbon footprint and was not statutory. 

 

The Cabinet was informed that in response to the instruction to simplify the procedure, consideration had been given to which aspects of the application would cause difficulty to groups and which aspects could be omitted.  The original application process had been reviewed and was considered to be relatively straight forward, although feedback from prospective applicants suggested that the requirement to demonstrate a payback period could be onerous and prohibitive.  This requirement was an industry standard, however, in order to simplify the process it was proposed that the requirement to demonstrate a payback be exchanged for an approved list of technologies which were most likely to provide a reasonable return on energy savings.  It was also proposed that the level of grant be increased and simplified.  A

summary of the revised criteria was as follows:

 

Grants

There will be one level of grant available up to £5,000.  Grants would be allocated on an individual technology basis i.e. more than one grant could be requested by an organisation, say for (1) Boiler replacement and (2) Insulation.  Grants would only be payable on completion of a project and would be allocated on a first come, first served basis.

 

Criteria

Projects must deliver energy efficiency benefits and, if identified on the approved list of technologies, claimants would not be required to demonstrate a payback.  The approved technology list was included in Appendix A to the report, although Members were asked to note that this list would be subject to continual update and review of technologies.

 

For technologies not identified on the list, applicants would be asked to demonstrate a minimum payback period of ten years.

 

Payback of projects implemented must also be shorter than the expected life of the building or the technology must be transferable.

 

If the expected lifetime of the building or lease was shorter than the expected lifetime of the technology, then the compliancy calculation would be based on the shorter of the two.

 

Projects must be seen as being additional and not mandatory.

 

Applications were currently considered by a Panel of officers and it was noted that the Cabinet had requested that suitable projects were reported to it for approval.  In order to achieve reduced administration and bureaucracy Members were asked to delegate approval of projects to the Director of Law HR and Asset Management.

 

RESOLVED:

 

That the new procedure and criteria as set out above be adopted for future applications for the Community Energy Efficiency Grant:

Publication date: 20/01/2012

Date of decision: 12/01/2012

Decided at meeting: 12/01/2012 - Cabinet

Effective from: 28/01/2012

Accompanying Documents: