You can call the Home Heat Helpline on 0800 33 66 99. It’s a free phone line running from 9-6 Monday to Fridays, which provides advice for those who are struggling to pay their energy bills and keep warm.

Research has show that one in ten households are entitled to some form of assistance with their fuel bills.  That help is worth an average of £250 per household.

The Home Heat Helpline’s trained advisors can also help with claiming support such as

- Free or discounted home insulation

- Discounts and rebate schemes

- Joining the Priority Service Register (disabled and elderly)

- Flexible payment options and benefit entitlement checks.

You can also find further details online by visiting www.homeheathelpline.org.uk

So don’t sit and freeze whislt worrying about bills, call the line and find out what help and advice is available for your household!

Rewarding households by paying them to recycle and allowing people to generate their own electricity and sell it back to the National Grid are some of the ideas that will encourage and recognise responsibility towards the environment that is passed on to future generations.

We will also help to reduce householders’ energy bills by offering up to £6,500 for home energy improvements – paid for out of the savings made by the scheme.

A Conservative Government will lead by example, pledging to cut Whitehall’s own energy use and saving the taxpayer up to £300 million a year in bills.

Walking along the seafront, come wind, rain or sunshine, I see just how many local people enjoy angling. But now, those who go out in small boats for their angling face a new threat from the European Union. The EU wants them to include their catch in fish quotas, and force them to get licenses.

In my view, this is regulation gone mad. I am calling on our local MPs to show their support for angling, the Angling Trust and local anglers by signing Early Day Motion 528, and to persuade the Government to oppose these changes in Brussels”.

EDM528 states:

“That this House expresses concern over the European Commission’s proposals to include recreational sea angling catches within the national quota, introduce a licensing scheme for vessels involved with recreational sea angling and force anglers to register their catches (Article 47 of the Commission’s Proposal for a Council Regulation establishing a Community control system for ensuring compliance with the rules of the Common Fisheries Policy COM(2008) 721 final); believes that these proposals will place an unfair burden on recreational sea anglers and put at risk the £1 billion and more than 20,000 jobs recreational sea angling contributes to the economy; notes that in 2008 the Government ruled out introducing a licence for sea anglers; and calls on the Government to oppose these proposals from the Commission”.

You can find out more at www.anglingtrust.net

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/natural_resources/article5542427.ece

Gas storage under threat as industry loses taste for salt

Plans to strengthen the security of Britain’s energy supplies by building more gas storage facilities are being threatened by the collapsing demand for salt in the chemicals industry.

Two of Britain’s largest gas storage projects are being built at saltmines in Cheshire close to a site at Runcorn where Ineos, Britain’s largest private company, produces plastics and chemicals. Ineos uses the salt as a key raw material to make products including construction materials and vinyls used in car manufacturing. The extraction process, which involves injecting water into wells and leaching out the salt as brine, creates large underground caves suitable for secure gas storage.

However, the collapse in industrial demand for many of the products from Runcorn has raised questions about the proposed timetables for opening the gas storage sites, which are being developed by E.ON, the German power group, and GDF-Suez, its French competitor. The delays will increase fears about Britain’s vulnerability to energy supply shocks.

Britain has 15 days of gas storage against 99 in France and 122 in Germany, leaving it far more exposed to disruptions such as the recent pipeline dispute between Russia and Ukraine. Once built, E.ON’s 162 million cubic metre gas storage facility at Holford would hold enough gas for 3.5 million British homes, but it is up to three years behind schedule because of technical problems, a spokesman said.

Sources say that falling industrial demand for chemicals produced by Ineos at Runcorn is emerging as a key issue that could delay the opening still further.

David Steven, chief operating officer of British Salt, a company that is developing a third gas storage project at nearby Warmingham, Cheshire, said that falling industrial salt demand had placed several UK gas projects under threat, although he pointed out that its site already had ten existing cavities and therefore remained on track.

GDF-Suez is developing an even bigger project at nearby Stublach with 28 caverns and 400millioncubic metres of storage. If built, it would represent 10 per cent of Britain’s gas storage capacity. The project is due to be commissioned between 2014 and 2018.

Plunging demand for salt is the latest in a series of hurdles to confront Britain’s struggling gas storage developers. The UK has four billioncubic metres of gas storage, most of which is at a single subsea location operated by Centrica in the North Sea.

A further four billion cubic metres are planned but schemes have been held up by financing problems as well as difficulties obtaining planning permission from local authorities fearful of their environmental impact.

Most British supplies of natural gas have come from the North Sea, but reserves are falling rapidly, making the country more dependent on imports. By 2015, it is thought that up to 80 per cent of the UK’s gas supplies will be imported, compared with 40 per cent at present.