Bringing together almost 500 delegates, 40 exhibitors and 38 speakers, our biggest ever fuel poverty conference has just concluded. With recent government announcements regarding the Warm Homes Plan, it was a timely occasion to meet in person to discuss the priorities that need to be addressed to ensure the millions of people across the UK can afford to heat and power their homes. The event coincided with our 45th birthday as a charity, so we were thrilled to hold the event at the Glasshouse in Gateshead, near to Durham where we were first founded and near to Newcastle where our Head Office still remains to this day.
We heard from experts on our panels on a host of key issues ranging from retrofit, child poverty and lessons learnt from 45 years of fighting fuel poverty. Thank you so much to every one of our speakers for sharing your insights with such clarity and spurring debate about what we need to do next.
We held four breakout sessions, which allowed our delegates to discuss key topics – health, retrofit, digital exclusion and the North East Combined Authority Warm Homes Taskforce. We had such an engaged audience who asked brilliant questions and the conversations which continued from the moment that Conference started and will continue long into the future.
This year, we also introduced spotlight sessions, giving delegates an opportunity to hear from speakers with lived experience of fuel poverty, our Retrofit team, our Advisers and a focus on fuel poverty in the North East, where our conference was held and National Energy Action was founded.
The exhibition allowed stallholders to meet other delegates who are passionate about ending fuel poverty. They were able to share best practices and make connections to work together in the future. We’re stronger as a movement – and our exhibition is a brilliant way of making sure that we can work together to help reach more people who need support.
While recognising the challenges that we face, we closed our Conference by celebrating some fantastic individuals and organisations who do amazing work to help people on the ground. We were pleased to recognise Sheffield Citizens Advice, Ashford Borough Council, Hope 4 U, YES Energy Solutions and Lightning Reach with our Annual Conference Recognition awards for their tireless work in going above on beyond to make life better for the people that they support.
The event gave us all renewed inspiration for how we support people living in cold, damp and unhealthy homes. Thank you to our sponsors EVouchers, Northern Gas Networks, Northern Powergrid and OVO for making the event possible.
