We dedicated our February workshop to talk to our social partners and stakeholders about our Carbon Monoxide Strategy.
We dedicated our February workshop to talk to our social partners and stakeholders about our Carbon Monoxide Strategy.
To feedback what we’ve been working on since we last met and how your feedback is shaping our plans and direction around partnership working.
Specifically, we wanted to discuss our carbon monoxide strategy with our social partners, explain the current funding allowances and how were using them to support CO projects, the work we’ve undertaken to date and the research and insight that has shaped our approach.
We wanted to share our future strategy and focus specifically on two areas – technology and data and external awareness campaigns – to discuss what else our partners felt we should be doing, what else should influence our strategy and identify any emerging risks and issues we ought to consider.
67%
felt our level of investment in CO projects was proportional given other vulnerabilities that needed investment and support.
Our CO Approach
It was clear from your feedback that you were supportive of our approach but felt we could be doing more to raise awareness. This included highlighting specific groups of people we should engage and taking a more person-centred approach in communications and any campaigns.
Suggestions of targeting specific age groups, those in rural areas, and aligning with specific health needs, such as the visually impaired, are really helpful. We already have radio adverts to raise awareness for as many customers as possible but we will look at how we can expand our awareness campaigns to target specific communities and groups. To link to this, we are planning a new campaign in the media to promote CO awareness, PSR and the importance of the 0800 number. We are also going to look at the different, most effective ways of targeting private landlords with our collaborative GDN CO Group.
NGN research and data
You told us that as a consequence of living costs rising and fuel poverty there would be an impact on CO safety, with more people taking measures to save costs, such as not getting appliances serviced regularly.
We recognise this is an increasing challenge and risk for our customers and will use this to inform our approach over the next year. We have recently undertaken a large doorstep survey with customers to understand levels of CO awareness and identify areas we need to target more and distributed free CO alarms at the same time. We are also currently working on several projects, in collaboration with other Gas Distribution Network’s to help us combat potential safety risks due to rising costs.
Emerging Risks
You felt there was a clear emerging CO risk around travel, holiday lets and private landlords, identifying this as a clear sector where there was concern about the CO safety of accommodation.
We will look to undertake a programme of engagement with businesses such as Air B&B and landlords to understand what their policies and requirements are in relation to CO when registering a property. We are also going to map out where CO alarms are being sold and utilise this to work out whether or not they are in CO hotspots. This will enable us to work out which areas may need more CO awareness.
Improving our CIVS workshops
You provided really positive feedback on the workshop itself and found it interesting, insightful and useful. The one area you said could be improved was having longer time in the breakout rooms and also having a chance to do more networking.
The discussions in this group are always lively and we are grateful you all have so much to add to the conversations. We are also mindful of taking up too much time, but we will look at allocating some more time to the breakout sessions at our next workshop.