Energy Costs Survey – have your say!

The Department for Business, Enterprise, and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) is conducting a survey about the impact of energy costs and charities have the opportunity to have their say about how cost increases are affecting them. They’ve recently extended the deadline for responses until Sunday, 30 October 2022. You can find and complete the survey here.

You will need some information about your charity’s finances and its energy costs, so this likely will need to be completed by a member of your finance or management team, or a trustee who is familiar with those issues. It takes about 15-20 minutes to complete.

The data gathered (or lack thereof) could be crucial for the development of the government’s Energy Bill Relief Scheme which runs to the end of March, and limits the prices that companies can charge non-domestic users like charities for energy. Simultaneous to the running of this scheme, there will be a three-month review to determine which organisations are most at risk from higher energy costs and how they might be supported after March. This survey is intended to feed into that review.

With the government changing leaders (and policies) on a regular basis recently, we’ve already seen some changes to similar schemes for households, which has been reduced from two years to six months in duration. With yet another Prime Minister and Chancellor in place there could now be some more certainty about the future direction and an opportunity for some hard data to stand a chance of influence future policy.

Our friends at Charity Finance Group have produced this very helpful blog which explains how to complete the survey, as there as some technical questions to think about before you begin.

Please don’t delay and take a few minutes to complete this survey this week!