Plymouth City Council are one of the UKs leading local authorities when it comes to taking action on the low carbon agenda. The Council supports the award winning Plymouth Energy Community and are also involved in several trans-national programmes including the Climate Active Neighbourhoods (CAN) programme. In July 2016 Plymouth commissioned CAG to undertake research into the issues that influence domestic householders behaviour in relation to domestic energy efficiency and subsequently to develop an Engagement and Evaluation Action Plan to guide the roll out of a new domestic energy efficiency programme part funded via CAN.

How we delivered the project

The research involved:

• A rapid evidence appraisal focused on developing an understanding of the existing knowledge base in relation to the factors that impact on the uptake of domestic energy efficiency measures.
• A series of semi-structured qualitative interviews with UK based expert practitioners.
• A series of interviews with local strategic stakeholders, for example organisations representing private landlords.
• A review of current domestic energy efficiency schemes and their approach to, and experiences of, customer engagement.
• A series of focus groups with a range of categories of domestic householders in Plymouth.
• The development of an Engagement and Evaluation Action Plan, informed by the insight generated through the research, to guide the roll out, and evaluation, of a new domestic energy efficiency initiative.

Objectives achieved

The Engagement and Evaluation Action Plan was completed in January 2017. Since then Plymouth City Council have commissioned Plymouth Energy Community (PEC) to undertake the roll out of the new domestic energy efficiency scheme in three City wards. A requirement of the roll out is that PEC act in accordance with CAG’s Engagement and Evaluation Action Plan. CAG were appointed in September 2018 to undertake a formative and summative evaluation of the new scheme.