Having sent out a letter to council leaders encouraging town halls to engage in bulk buying and communal switching activities, environment minister Edward Davey recently made it clear that authorities should be prioritising work to reduce energy costs for their residents.

Facilitating the reduction of energy prices, collective switching allows a number of residents to sign up to a contract which is then auctioned for by energy companies, forcing these suppliers to bid for the provision of the cheapest tariff.

The successful energy company will subsequently be able to provide energy to a large number of households at once, and for a smaller price. Residents would then be permitted to either sign up to or reject this offer.

Government backing for the schemes has extended to a £5m competition, which will offer rewards for the most innovative local authority or third sector collective switching programme.

Launching a public awareness campaign for their own strategy in September last year, South Lakeland DC was at the forefront of authority action to support local communities in the payment of energy bills.

Deputy leader and portfolio holder for environment and sustainability at South Lakeland DC, Clare Feeney–Johnson, says that the actions of the town hall had been inspired by the work of the commercial sector.

‘South Lakeland has an aging population and just over 28% of the district is affected by fuel poverty, which is higher than the national average. The council was aware that businesses were going into partnership to buy energy and thought: why can’t we do that for our residents?’

Approaching their 52,000 households through a combined newspaper, radio and leaflet campaign, South Lakeland DC used existing local partnerships in parishes to minimise promotion costs.

Collective switching organiser iChoosr provided the authority with advice throughout this process, subsequently undertaking negotiations with energy suppliers later in the year.

IChoosr project leader for Great Britain, Filip Vissers, said that this would be a typical method for councils in the UK to start collective switching.

‘We also found a way to promote it without the Internet and around 20% of people registered through that route, including the elderly or those in difficult social situations,’ Vissers says.

However, owing to the potentially wide cross section of individuals registering for the collective switching scheme, South Lakeland remained unsure about how much of a cost reduction their residents could expect.

‘Historically, the average save is £100 to £150 but we do not know who has signed up. It might be a savvy energy buyer or may be people who have never switched before. It is difficult to say, but the point of it is for most of the residents to save,’ Feeney–Johnson emphasises.

Once registration closed in September, over 1600 individuals in South Lakeland had signed up to the collective switching pledge, representing 3.2% of the district.

Supplier Ovo Energy successfully bid to provide electricity and gas to the region, having offered the cheapest tariff during the auction. Letters and emails will now be sent out to registered individuals, giving households the option to accept or reject the company’s offer.

Intending to support the roll-out of energy switching measures across other town halls, South Lakeland DC and iChoosr will host consultation events later in the year.

Overall, 60 councils have said that they will attend meetings in Kendal, Birmingham and London over the next few months, with two further sessions in December catering for demand from additional authorities.

Vissrs says that following a consultation with 12 councils in May, a number were looking to imminently start collective switching while more than half of this group were in the process of making a decision.

‘IChoosr want to try to pool several schemes into a single group, with four or five councils running independent schemes yet accessing a communal plan and voice. We could pool registrants, giving authorities greater purchasing power as they bid with potentially around 20,000 residents,’ Vissrs says.

Norwich City Council and Oldham Council have similarly united with two organisations to pursue collective switching measures.

Feeney–Johnson emphasises that South Lakeland had done much of the difficult work in being a trailblazer for energy switching.

‘If councils have the time to do it, then they should,’ Feeney–Johnson says. ‘South Lakeland was the first and we had no one to ask how to do it.’

‘We are very rural and spread out in South Lakeland. A smaller town would make it much easier to promote collective switching. This probably made it harder for us but we just wanted it out there,’ Feeney–Johnson adds.