NORTHAMPTONSHIRE ACRE LAUNCHES NEW COMMUNITY OIL-BUYING SCHEME

Northamptonshire ACRE is looking for local co-ordinators to help run its new bulk-buying scheme for domestic heating oil.

The scheme is aimed at bringing communities together to make the most of joint buying power so that greater savings can be made and passed on to customers.

We want the scheme to be rooted in communities – because that’s the way that Northamptonshire ACRE works – and are looking for local volunteers who will act as ‘go-betweens’ for us. Their job will be to tell us each month how much oil the people in their village want to order, and then telling people when the oil will arrive and how much it will cost. ‘We’ve made it as simple as possible because we know people are busy’ said Beth Milne, Rural Officer. ‘Local co-ordinators won’t have to do the negotiating with the oil suppliers and won’t have to deal with any money, so we don’t expect this to take much time’.

Northamptonshire ACRE believes that finding a way to keep fuel costs as low as possible is particularly important in rural areas, where many households don’t have mains gas. Research commissioned by our national RCC network has shown that in Northamptonshire, more than half the people who live in fuel poverty (ie with fuel costs that are more than 10% of their income) live in rural areas. This is out of proportion to the number of people who actually live in rural areas (37.7%). We don’t think that’s right.

The scheme will also help to reduce the carbon footprint of the actual delivery system. Every time a tanker comes out to make a delivery, it’s using a lot of fuel – a full tanker may only get about 8 miles per gallon! So if deliveries are organised so that one tanker can reach as many customers in as small an area as possible, the fuel consumption is reduced.

Full details of how the scheme works are set out in two leaflets – one for local community co-ordinators,
and one for members of the scheme

Membership Application Form

Please note that this is not an online application. If you cannot print this form please contact us and we will send you one in the post.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 29th, 2011 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Bulk Oil Buying Scheme. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.