The full findings of #FuelPoverty Lab (and lessons learned on the way)

Before we reveal our latest slide deck - here's 10 things we learned during our 12 week stint:

  • People write lots and lots of reports with lots and lots of recommendations. There's a national recommendation/action imbalance that the UK needs to fix.
  • ‘How can we solve fuel poverty?’ sometimes became ‘What is Bromford willing to do to solve fuel poverty in our customers?’ That’s a small question to try and innovate around.
  • Google slides (and google suite) is pimp. We aren't going back
  • Lots of stuff lingered in design phase too long as it was tricky to get substance for a test plan.
  • Fuel poverty can’t be extracted from actual poverty – now that’s a wicked problem! Makes designing specific solutions difficult
  • As always our data was reasonably useless at finding people. But that might have to be the case – as ‘are you in fuel poverty?’ questions seem way over the top.
  • Nobody likes Gantt charts. Period.
  • Customers don't understand what Fuel Poverty means. It's organisation-centric jargon.
  • We found evidence of people with poor heating behaviours regardless of being in 'poverty'. It crosses age and income ranges and we mustn't forget that.
  • Bromford do some great stuff on affordable warmth - but most of it has been focussed on buildings rather than people.  
  • Our Slack group aimed at bringing people together around a topic completely failed. We'll share the lessons learned.
  • Everyone seems to like the concept of a 'Home Doctor' who helps you run your home. Whether it's a visit , a call , or a robot assistant- there's unmet demand.
  • Focusing on a big 'wicked problem' DID work. We got a great understanding of what was going on from colleagues and customers. People have huge knowledge we must share.
  • There's no magic bullet. We all heat our homes in very different ways and even the best of us are occasionally wasteful. Current marketing and awareness campaigns are missing their mark. 
  • Smart technology is underutilised but also - not completely trusted - by customers. We need to educate people rather than just champion technology.  
  • People generally read to the end of list type posts featuring cat pictures.

So, heres the story of the concept and the things we'll be testing/piloting (full screen for a better view!):

 
 


You'll be able to follow the tests , successes and failures through the Lab Diary.

A big shout out to people who have been helping us so far:

Marc Goldby, Andy Johnson ,Stu Bailey ,Sharon Wooldridge, Chris Jones, Russ Fowler, Nick Cummins, Alex Dixon , Alex Green, Jason Holder, Darrin Gamble ,Wendy Stephens, Rob Dudley, Joanne Jenkins, Ruth Burley, Dave Roobotham, Richard Haynes, Sue Murray, Will Lilley (we will have forgotten someone - sorry!)