Warm Front Grant saved me a fortune!

NorfolkBroad

My experience of the Warmfront Scheme is as follows.

I applied last year and was told I qualified as I am in receipt of DLA at the highest rate and they sent out a surveyor who informed us that they couldn't do anything at the time as we had a working central heating system (even though the boiler was installed when the bungalow was built in 1963 !!) but as soon as it developed a problem to call them.

Our boiler blew up in March leaving us with no heating/hot water so we called them out again. An engineer came round in April and condemned the boiler and our oil tank but said the radiators etc were fine so he would send off the paperwork to get the ball rolling for the said items to be replaced.

I've received a letter this morning informing me that my application was successful and I've been awarded the maximum grant of £4000 but that as the estimate for the work is £6200 I have to pay £2200 up front before the work can commence. As we are living on benefits there is no way we can pay it.

I am astounded at the estimate - the materials are £1450 but the labour is £4750 !

Our local oil supplier quoted us £700 to replace our tank last summer as it is leaking but we couldn't afford it which is when we were advised by my occupational therapist to apply to Warmfront for a grant.

Has anyone else come across this high a quote as it seems the work has to be done by the contractors who are appointed by the scheme and I'm sure I could get it done cheaper but would I then lose out on the grant ?

I am at a loss as to what I should do, can anyone advise me please ?

manda1205

NorfolkBroad: I too live in norfolk and have just had a surveyor say that we can have oil central heating put in, Im now waiting for the contractor to come round and price up, I really hope they do not quote us as steep as youve been quoted, my brother (works in building trade) said it can be done for £4000 easy, so we were hoping not to have any over pay. Ill let you know what the outcome is but I cannot see it would cost £4750 labour, unless theres one man with one arm doing it! Even then!?!

Rebob

Hi NorfolkBroad

I suggest getting a quote from a local plumber and then contact warmfront with it. Even though we live in different areas the grants are supposed to cover the lot. I know someone who lives on the next street to me and the plumber they sent to her said she has to pay £500 where as I have had more work (gas supply installed) on an identical house for free. All I paid for was a towel rail type radiator as the grant only pays for normal radiators.

Do not just accept the cost. Even if the quote proves to be about right try your local council for a top up grant.

NorfolkBroad

Thanks for the replies - I rang Warmfront this morning and asked how the quote was arrived at as it seemed rather high. The woman basically told me what was in the letter and when I queried the high cost of labour for the amount of work she said the costs were set by the government !! I asked if it was possible to get the grant money and employ my own contractor to do the work as I'd had other quotes which were much cheaper but was told that wasn't possible as the work can only be carried out by their appointed contractor.

I also spoke to the guy at our local council who dealt with my Disabled Facilities Grant (I needed wheelchair access and a wetroom installed) who said he had experience of the Warmfront Scheme and in his opinion they were rip-off merchants and it should only cost about £2K to do the work even taking into account that oil-fired boilers cost around 20% more than gas ones!! He is sending me an application form for a Grant Scheme they run which should pay the excess for me. Hope it doesn't take too long to sort out as I suffer from bad circulation and with the lovely "summer" we've been having I'm freezing with no heating (and we've already been without it since March as I said in my OP - have had to take to my bed with the laptop to keep warm
.

kizzykizzywizzy

2 years ago my husband was made redundant ( without redundancy money ) during this time, we were given a warm front grant for loft insulation, a new condenser boiler, cavity wall insulation & energy saving lightbulbs, I would never have known about this except they knocked on my Nana's door & she was given a new boiler & loft insulation, looked too good to be true, luckily it wasn't long before my husband got a reasonable job, so in a way redundancy was not such a bad thing, though try telling us that at the time with a baby on the way!!!

margaretclare

Hi all

Since getting our new boiler courtesy of WarmFront back in January we continued to pay £50 a month on a budget plan for gas. Eventually we thought 'this can't be right'. The upshot is, after re-reading the meters and some number-crunching at the provider's office, we've been repaid £227 and our monthly payment is now down to £25. Well, we were told we could save 30% in gas costs, but in fact, that's 50%! You can imagine, we're very very pleased.

Margaret

rainee

oh well 3 years ago i had a new boiler put in by warm front replacing a 20 year old one well last thursday a baxi engineer said it was beyond economical repair and its tough luck get on with it?
eaga said sorry could apply for another grant but would take up to 6 months to sort so really its put it on a credit card and sort it ourselves as we have 2 autistic children who have no hot water for almost 2 weeks
has anybody got any ideas on where to go next we sill be writing complaint letters to both eaga and baxi but that wont solve our crises now!!

luv_my_brass

My house is very draughty and would love someone to sort it out for me, although I am retired and only in receipt of the Government pension, I do have savings - do I assume that I do not qualify for any of these benefits?

modger

I am receipt of WFTC and CTC

But i am above the pay threshold, how would this affect my application and if so by how much...

I am a single parent too with no central heating, my child is 11.

Thanks in advance

manda1205

manda1205 wrote: »

NorfolkBroad: I too live in norfolk and have just had a surveyor say that we can have oil central heating put in, Im now waiting for the contractor to come round and price up, I really hope they do not quote us as steep as youve been quoted, my brother (works in building trade) said it can be done for £4000 easy, so we were hoping not to have any over pay. Ill let you know what the outcome is but I cannot see it would cost £4750 labour, unless theres one man with one arm doing it! Even then!?!

Well I had the warm front surveyor come round in july, only today had the heating company come round and do a quote (so thats 4months already), he reckons its gonna cost about £5700 so that means we've gotta find the other £1700. But he did say that my local council do top up grants so hoping we can get one of them (up to £3000), also Norfolkbroad might be worth seeing your local council to see if you could get a top up. The heating bloke also said if we wanted to cut costs we could lay the slab for the oil tank and dig the trench, he reckons that'd save us about £500. He reckons warm front are open to your suggestions of cutting the cost. Now just got to wait for confirmation of quote.