As the steep and potentially very worrying winter energy bills come in, it is a very stressful time for all groups in our sector, large and small.

The subject was brought up at last week’s online update meeting on the Cost of Living Crisis organised by Preston City Council’s community engagement team.

On behalf of our members, PCN brought up the specific issue of energy bills for charity groups as they have been particularly hard hit.

We have had reports from members who had found they were on a higher VAT rate than they should have been paying and were also being charged for a Climate Change Levy they were not duty bound to pay.

Neither of these issues had been pointed out by their energy broker and they had to sort the admin to rejig their account themselves.

In addition, other members have found themselves tied in to an expensive energy company and have found it hard to change contracts.

We have looked for ways to assist and thanks to Annie Wynne of our longstanding member group Let’s Grow Preston for providing the following links which give info on utility bills assistance for charities.

https://www.ncvo.org.uk/about-us/our-services/trusted-suppliers/office-services/utility-aid/#/

https://charitiesbuyinggroup.com/services/utilities/

https://www.ugp.co.uk/charity-energy-supplier/  

If you have located any other resources or info on how we can tackle this worrying issue, please email tonyd@prestoncn.org and we will distribute the info to our members.