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Guidance

Energy Company Obligation (ECO): Help to Heat scheme - flexible eligibility

Guidance for local authorities on engaging with energy suppliers to identify households that would benefit from energy efficiency improvements.

Updates to this page

From:
Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy
Published:
11 April 2017
Last updated:
28 February 2019
Show all updates

  1. The updated "Data sharing for determination of eligibility and fuel poverty targeting" guidance takes into account changes made by General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018, which came into force on 25 May 2018.

  2. Guidance updated to incorporate ECO3 changes.

  3. List of local authority statements of intent updated.

  4. Updated list of links to published Statements of Intent.

  5. List of local authority statements of intent updated.

  6. List of Local Authority SOI links updated.

  7. List of local authority statements of Intent added.

  8. Addendum to guidance published, providing info on legal requirements / general principles.

  9. First published.

Documents

Energy Company Obligation 3: Flexible eligibility - guidance for local authorities

PDF, 692 KB, 52 pages

ECO flexible eligibility guidance: data sharing for determination of eligibility and fuel poverty targeting: legal issues and general GDPR principles

PDF, 474 KB, 30 pages

Statement of intent template (PDF version)

PDF, 199 KB, 8 pages

Statement of intent template (Word version)

MS Word Document, 46.4 KB

This file may not be suitable for users of assistive technology.

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List of Local Authority Statement of Intent (SoI) links, updated 5 February 2019 (see note below)

MS Excel Spreadsheet, 105 KB

This file may not be suitable for users of assistive technology.

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Details

Under the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) Help to Heat flexible eligibility, obligated energy suppliers will be able to use the ‘flexible eligibility’ mechanism for up to 25% of their ECO Affordable Warmth obligation by installing energy saving measures in premises that have been declared eligible by local authorities.

Participating local authorities will have to ensure these are households in private tenure living either in fuel poverty or living on a low income and who are particularly vulnerable to the effects of living in the cold. In addition some non-fuel poor homes will be allowed for solid wall insulation projects, as long as a proportion of the households in the project are in fuel poverty or living in the cold.

This guidance is aimed at local authorities and provides templates for the local authorities’ statement of intent and declarations, as well as guidance on the targeting of households.

If you need to view the previous version of the guidance to check how it has changed, it is available on the National Archives site.

The last document on this page is a list of links to ECO Flexible Eligibility Statements of Intent (SoIs) that have been published on Local Authority websites. It is not an endorsed list, nor is it exhaustive, but lists those SoIs of which we were aware at the point the document was updated. Local authorities wanting to see good practice SoIs should refer to the ECO3 guidance.

All published SoIs should be sent to ecoteam@energysecurity.gov.uk with the link to the published SoI. We will update the list periodically.

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