Warm Front's heating scheme leaves the elderly cold

We're not surprised when cowboy builders fleece pensioners.

But when a £350million-a-year government-funded scheme is accused of doing the same, it's a different story.

Warm Front pays for new central heating systems and insulation for some of Britain's poorest households.

But last week MPs lined up to accuse Eaga plc, the firm running Warm Front, of ripping off pensioners and the taxpayer.
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We've heard horror stories of our own. Retired Jack and Elizabeth Thompson, of Barnsley, South Yorks, got a £2,700 Warm Front grant after their boiler burst.

But they were asked to pay £2,100 for extra work that their son Andrew said wasn't needed and he should know - he's a former Warm Front contractor.

Disabled Gary Thomas from Liverpool has gone though two broken boilers and three water pumps since Warm Front offered to replace his boiler.

Eighty-year-old Matthew Carroll, from Leeds, was left with a hole in his roof and a £130 repair bill after a visit from Warm Front engineers.

Since its launch in 2000, the scheme has helped to heat 1.6 million households and cut their fuel bills.

But something appears to have gone wrong. Labour MP Robert Flello told the House of Commons: "The trickle of complaints coming to my desk has turned into a flood."

He's worried that an "excellent idea" is being abused and cited the scandal of a Warm Front customer being charged for scaffolding - although he lives in a bungalow.

Reports by Warm Front's independent "quality assessor", released to us under the Freedom of Information Act, show the number of unhappy customers has almost trebled since 2006 to 14 per cent.

We met Eaga's boss John Clough at the firm's Newcastle HQ and he said the same assessor called the scheme "very competitive" and insisted the true level of upheld complaints was less than half a per cent.

But the assessor also warned of a "potential void" because, until recently, inspectors only checked work done - not work billed for. In one case, a woman paid £350 towards work not carried out. This was only spotted by chance by the assessor, who arranged a refund.

The assessor concluded: "The extent the scheme is being abused cannot be determined."

When Warm Front was launched, the standard £2,500 grant almost always covered the work needed.

Now 40 per cent of householders needing new heating systems are asked to top up the grant. Eaga currently has 131 sub-contracted installers. Six have left since 2005, seven are suspended and six more are being closely monitored.

Clough, who's been paid £1.5million in two years as Eaga's chief exec, says: "If you are doing 250,000 homes a year, then there are some instances where sadly we do fall short of the standards we set ourselves.

"We are not perfect. But we refute the accusation of ripping off the government."

Trickle of complaints has turned into a flood

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The man making 'wind bags'

Seamus Garvey wants to "store the wind".

He believes the future of energy is storing it as compressed air in giant bags under the sea.

And a major power company has invested in the scheme.

Professor Garvey, a long-time proponent of compressed air, feels vindicated by the research grant.

He said: "As the country and the whole world moves toward using more renewable energy, we're going to need energy storage."

His idea would utilise familiar renewable sources - wind, waves and tidal power.
But Professor Garvey does not believe we should be forced to "use it or lose it" when conditions are best.

Energy would instead be used to compress and pump air into underwater bags, anchored to the seabed.

When energy demand is highest, the air would be released through a turbine, converting it to electricty.

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Call for delay to biofuels policy

The UK's chief environment scientist has called for a delay to a policy demanding inclusion of biofuels into fuel at pumps across the UK.

Professor Robert Watson said ministers should await the results of their inquiry into biofuels' sustainability.

Some scientists think biofuels' carbon benefits may be currently outweighed by negative effects from their production.

The Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) is to introduce 2.5% biofuels at the pumps from 1 April.

Professor Robert Watson warned that it would be insane if the RTFO had the opposite effects of the ones intended.

He said biofuels policy in the EU and the UK may have run ahead of the science.

His comments in an interview with BBC Radio 4's Today programme appear on the day when a coalition of pressure groups from Oxfam to Greenpeace writes to the Department for Transport (DfT) demanding that the policy be delayed until after the review.

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Solar-power paint lets you generate as you decorate

A lick of solar-power paint could see the roofs and walls of warehouses and other buildings generate electricity from the sun, if research by UK researchers pays off. The scientists are developing a way to paint solar cells onto the steel sheets commonly used to clad large buildings.

Steel sheets are painted rapidly in steel mills by passing them through rollers. A consortium led by Swansea University, UK, hopes to use that process to cover steel sheets with a photovoltaic paint at up to 40 square metres per minute.

The paint will be based on dye-sensitised solar cells. Instead of absorbing sunlight using silicon like conventional solar panels, they use dye molecules attached to particles of the titanium dioxide pigment used in paints.

That gives an energy boost to electrons, which hop from the dye into a layer of electrolyte. This then transfers the extra energy into a collecting circuit, before the electrons cycle back to the dye.

While less efficient than conventional cells, dye-based cells do not require expensive silicon, and can be applied as a liquid paste.

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