National Energy Action's Leicester-based team has been supporting vulnerable people across the city since January 2023, according to the charity. The project is funded by NHS Integrated Care and delivered in partnership with Leicester City Council's public health team1.
Support includes one-to-one affordable warmth and energy-efficiency advice by phone, alongside group presentations and workshops. The team also helps households understand their bills, manage fuel debt, and choose the most suitable payment options and meters. Where needed, people are offered top-up support or directed to local financial assistance such as the Household Support Fund1.
The project also provides educational opportunities in primary schools, builds community networks through Energy Champions, and delivers City & Guilds-accredited Energy Awareness training as well as short webinar sessions for frontline workers and volunteers1.
National Energy Action sets out the wider context for work of this kind. It states that NHS England spends more than £1.4 billion a year treating conditions linked to cold homes, while wider societal costs exceed £18.6 billion, including lost education and employment opportunities. The charity estimates that more than 10,000 people across the UK die each year due to living in a cold home, and says excess winter deaths in England and Wales rose by nearly 20% last winter, even before the added pressures of Covid-191.
The Leicester project sits alongside other National Energy Action health-related work. Its Connecting Homes for Health research explored the use of health-based eligibility criteria in housing improvement schemes; before help, over 80% of households reported their homes negatively impacting health, and following it this reduced to less than 1 in 101. The charity's £26.2 million Health and Innovation Programme assisted more than 9,000 households, with the Warm & Healthy Homes Fund providing interventions to 2,663 households across Great Britain1.
"Since January 2023, NEA's Leicester‑based team has been supporting vulnerable people across the city."
Why it matters for households
Cold, damp and poorly insulated homes carry measurable health consequences, and the Leicester project is aimed at people whose health is most exposed to them. For a household, the practical content of the support is advice on bills, fuel debt, payment options and meters, plus signposting to local financial assistance where needed1. That addresses the point at which energy costs and health risk meet: whether a home can be kept at a safe temperature, and what happens to arrears and payment arrangements when it cannot.
The figures National Energy Action publishes on cold homes describe the scale of that risk rather than the position of any individual household. Its estimate of more than 10,000 deaths a year across the UK linked to living in a cold home, and NHS England spending of more than £1.4 billion a year on treating conditions linked to cold homes, frame cold homes as a health issue as well as a cost issue1. For homes where someone is medically dependent on warmth, or where a health condition is made worse by cold, that framing is the reason health bodies rather than energy suppliers fund work of this kind.
The charity's own evaluation of health-based eligibility schemes found that over 80% of households reported their homes negatively affecting health before help, falling to less than 1 in 10 afterwards1. That is a self-reported measure from that research, not a prediction for any other household.
What happens next
National Energy Action states that the first phase of local delivery of its separate Warm Homes, Healthy Futures programme began in May 2024. That programme is described as a national programme delivered locally in areas with high need and limited support, developed with Energy Action Scotland and supported by Cadent, Northern Gas Networks, SGN and Wales & West Utilities1. No end date or further phase for the Leicester project is given in the material published by the charity.