London Borough (LB) Of Hackney ('the Council') and a number of local partner organisations have carried out a range of work to help residents reduce their gas and electricity bills in line with the Council’s sustainable community strategy. This has included a number of successful programmes to enable residents to increase their energy efficiency and to benefit from grant aid or other targeted help for the most vulnerable households. Having been successful in obtaining DECC resources through the 'Cheaper Energy Together' fund the Council now wishes to establish a collective purchasing and switching scheme for Hackney to enable householders to easily engage with the various energy markets (through a single agent appointed by the Council) to get a better deal for their energy requirements, with a reverse auction taking place by April 2013. This will be a singular opportunity to pilot the scheme in an inner London borough and will be evaluated against a range of criteria to ensure there is a marked impact on vulnerable households and represents good value for money, our aspiration is to run further schemes if this is successful but these will be procured separately The Council is seeking to appoint an agent under a concession contract to develop a solution and to run a collective energy switching scheme by means of reverse auction with energy suppliers on behalf of Hackney's households, particularly encouraging uptake by fuel poor households, including those utilising pre-paid meter cards, in all tenure categories and all fuel mainstream types (electricity, gas and oil). Our expectations, which will be within the criteria for selecting a partner, will include: • an organisation with considerable experience and success in running collective switching schemes with demonstrable past performance . • facilities for sign up both online and through direct contact which are easy to understand . • a maximum of two tariffs offered to all residents who have signed up to the auction, one for credit (cash, cheque, direct debit) and one for prepayment. • full assessment for residents who have signed up to the auction, to include the positive outcomes (cheaper tariff) and the negative outcomes (exit charges and other fees and loss or change of any access to vulnerable persons registers) • full disclosure of the financial benefit to the partner organisation, and to the council. • support and advice on successful marketing strategies. Whilst marketing will be carried out by the LB Hackney, the scheme should not exclude individuals and organisations beyond Hackney's boundaries, but the focus of marketing will focus on Hackney. The Council will require the appointed switching partner to work with Hackney's Energy Advice Line to maximise the promotion of the scheme, and encourage residents to take energy efficiency measures alongside cheaper energy deals.
Ref: HPS/H&C/0194,
LONDON BOROUGH OF HACKNEY
2nd Floor, Robert House, ,6-15 Florfield Road
London
E8 1DT
Olubunmi Akinmade
0208 356 3641
CServices.Procurement@hackney.gov.uk
Contract value: 1.00GBP
Published: 16 Jan 2013, Receipt by: 29 Jan 2013
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