Energy Saving Trust Reviews 

I recently insulated my loft. It is a large area covering a top floor flat. Dealings with energy saving trust for a grant that covered a substantial part of cost of insulation was much more straightforward than I expected.

I submitted a claim for a heat pump grant in late September. Three days later it was approved. The work was carried out in December with my claim for payment being submitted on the 17th. My claim was "finalised" on 9th January (reasonable, given Christmas and New Year holidays) and payment made a week later. Altogether a pretty smooth process; the only slight niggle was being asked for some documentation I'd already provided, but that was cleared up very quickly.

Our home has benefited from a number of the EST schemes, most recently AS Heat Pump, Solar PV and Battery storage Grants and Loans. The Team are super-helpful, know their stuff and genuinely seem to want the schemes to be used and succeed. I urge everyone to have a look at what may be available to help reduce your home's energy use and reduce your carbon footprint.

The financial support from Home Energy Scotland and the Energy Saving Trust will be for most people essential for crucial energy improvements such as an Air Source Heat Pump. The process of applying looks complicated at first sight, but once one gets started it's clear what you have to do, and the Energy Saving Trust people who answer their phone line are helpful and clear if you hit any difficulties.

Financially, well worth the effort involved in the application. Help is on hand to aid and talk you through the tricky bits

It was all pretty straightforward, staff were competent, friendly and time sensitive, and they made it possible for us to install a heat pump which otherwise we wouldn't have been able to do.

It is very beneficial to have financial support to instal green technologies. This is a great incentive and might make green technology for domestic properties more affordable. Some households might not have sufficient income to so. Hence, loans and grants might make the difference in making these improvements at all.
EST and Home Energy Scotland staff are always courteous, patient, well informed and helpful.

Communication and process was excellent. Never thought we would be able to get one but we did get the grant. it is available so glad we applied our house is 100% warmer and the guy who did it Whole house insulation went above and beyond recommend highly…

Absolutely useless. Do not bother unless you want to spend hours uploading documents and responding to emails to incompetent/ or overworked staff.

Started the Used EV car loan process in early October. - got around to actually starting the process in November once I had found a dealership willing to hold a car for more than 2-3 days.

Turns out they'll be holding it for a lot longer than that..

Submitted all my paperwork to then be told 2 weeks later it's not correct. Which is fine, took a while for them to tell me but I then submitted everything they needed. Turns out it wasn't exactly what they needed, they needed PDF's rather than pictures. By this point the dealership had been holding the car for 3-4 weeks, I had paid my deposit and taken insurance out on the car - big mistake. (Down £2.1k at this point with no sign of a car)

I then receive an email telling me I had been accepted for the final loan part, just to then get an email saying it would be another 3 weeks before finalising the process. (This will likely get delayed by another 2 weeks if any slight mistake is made in the paperwork).

During this whole process I was told my selected dealership wasn't eligible for me buying the car from them. This was said 4 weeks after my dealer had been holding the car for me. This is also after around 8 phone calls of me asking for updates, asking if I had uploaded all the required documents, and after being told that the dealership was fine.

After arguing that the dealership was fine and I had my final email telling me that they can't make an exclusion and that the dealership can't be used. They included links to acceptable dealerships. In one of the links my EXACT dealership was listed as acceptable. I then called to tell the person I'd been emailing this to then be told it wasn't good enough. (They then finally accepted it after I took screenshots - doing their job for them).

I later received an email telling me that a previous customer was declined from getting the loan from that dealership in November - chances are I was that customer in November but no one thought to actually look into it the dealership was eligible or not. (Even after me arguing that it was fine).

So I'm now 4-5 weeks in with no method of transport, insurance on a car I don't have, a rightfully so angry dealership, no sign of a car in the next month as I doubt they'll be working Christmas.. a useless EV charger on my wall that I got installed, and finally tens of hours of my time wasted for a interest free loan that's near impossible to get unless a dealership is willing to wait 2 months for you to MAYBE buy the car.

I've also been through the heatpump grant process with these guys.. that has a similar story.

1 star due to the staff on the support phone number line being very nice and knowledgeable (and 1 star being the lowest I can select).

EDIT:

Ignore their response to my review - I emailed that email address on the 17/12/2024.. its now 09/01/2025 (no response as usual). Car money has only just been sent on this date and the dealership has been holding the car for 6-7 weeks now.. Had a whole back and forth between the dealership and EST for getting an invoice confirmed as i HAD to be the middle man rather than EST just communicating directly.. (Partially dealerships fault for giving me the wrong external email address 3 times)

Also just TODAY had the rest of the heat-pump money confirmed (given my verbal/written confirmations for the rest of the money). That means the installer has been also waiting weeks since they installed the whole system (26th November 2024)

The people on the phone continue to be very nice but I'm absolutely sick of calling them every second day for them to actually do something rather than waiting 14 days between every word of communication.

I experienced all the problems recorded here. The EST portal is a disaster. I had three engagements with this nightmarish organisation. The first was for a relatively modest insulation grant/loan in which I encountered most of the problems but it was on a smallish scale and I didn’t give it too much thought. Missing documents etc I assumed to be my own fault. With an airsource heatpump it all kicked off again. This time I knew for sure that they were losing things, coming up with new reasons to obstruct the process and dragging it out for weeks and weeks. This was a part payment because my contractor subsequently installed solar panels. When it came to getting the payment for solar panels I was, by now, super-keen not to make any errors: fat lot of good that did me. The cycle of nonsense went on and on and on. Eventually, when they had entirely run out of obstructions and the application was passed for payment, they took weeks to pay.

The people you speak to are nice and helpful. The portal is a nightmare. It needs a complete makeover, not by a software techie but by a user interface expert. For instance portal communications are marked “outgoing” (from EST) or “incoming” (from the claimant). It’s a simple thing and you get used to it but ambiguities pervade the site. The structure of the landing page is ludicrous, especially on a mobile. Something goes horribly wrong with the uploading of documents.

I have never experienced a system for checking my creditworthiness like the one here. It is bizarre and Kafkaesque like every other aspect of the process.

The insistence that you may not use any kind of agent to help you with the process is ludicrous. The Law of Agency is a very well developed branch of law.

Everything is weighted in favour of the well educated, business experienced, tech savvy, patient and well funded applicant. This is the reverse of the way the system should work.

We are still in the email/portal circle of doom. You upload all your documents/invoices, two weeks later they come back with a problem, you upload everything again, two weeks later it's a different problem and repeat, 3 months have passed. Assign a case worker or something because every individual we come across seems to have a different idea of what you're expected to provide. Or better yet, communicate with the installers about exactly what kind of invoices are expected. I can't communicate any further without swearing at the sheer idiocy of it all.

I don't know where to begin. The funding portal is a huge waste of time, I uploaded everything piece of information and documents they asked for, only to receive messages on the portal telling me I haven't supplied enough information. I call them, only to be told they have all information they need. Low and behold, more messages telling me I haven't given them all the information. No idea where to go from here.

Don't know where to start really! Website is an absolute nightmare for any end user. Needs a total revamp. Overly complex and time consuming. Usually takes a week to get a response to e-mails. On the plus side, any advisors I spoke to via phone calls were really helpful and knowledgeable. 5 stars to them.
Gordon Keith.

Bureaucratic at best. Obstructive at worst.

I gave this review to Home Energy Scotland, but it should really be towards EST.

My daughter and son-in-law are undertaking a renovation project to and old cottage property that has been unoccupied for over 2 years.
The reason I write is to highlight the ineffectiveness of Home Energy Scotland (HES) / Energy Savings Trust (EST) in providing funding support to enable them make their future home energy efficient.
Their project is not complicated - It requires the complete ‘gutting’ of the property and the installation of a number of energy efficiency improvements and renewables, as promoted by your HES campaigns. However, although a considerable marketing budget seems to be allocated to the promotion of warmer home initiatives, their experience of the follow through with actual support has been overly bureaucratic at best, and obstructive at worst.

Although HES have been good at offering advice, they would appear to lack knowledge of how retrofit insulation and renewable installations are achieved in domestic renovation projects. There is an assumption that householders will engage a variety of ‘accredited’ contractors. My daughter and son in law's research to date has shown that, if they can find them, many of these contractors are ‘cowboys’ who inflate costs because they are grant funded, and are unwilling to work with other trades.
They took advice from HES, who suggested that, because their project was a complete renovation and works required to be coordinated, they should request that EST use their discretion to review grant applications on a case by case basis. Disappointingly, after a detailed application process, EST were dismissive, only suggesting that an appeal be made to the Scottish Government.

Going round in circles...

I'm interested in one of the NISEP schemes listed on the EST's website. The documentation says contact the scheme manager for further details. So I contacted the company listed as the scheme manager, twice by email over several weeks with no response, and then called them to be told they weren't involved in that sort of work (ASHP's) and couldn't help or advise who could.

On the EST website, under NISEP, they say if you want to discuss NISEP schemes to contact the Northern Ireland Energy Advice Service, so I called them and they told me they only deal with housing executive properties and couldn't help and didn't know who could help.

So I called the EST number for Belfast, and I get an automated message with no option to speak to a person. That message tells me to call the Energy Advice Service for NISEP queries. As above they already told me they couldn't help.

So I submitted an enquiry via the form on the EST website...and after a week I haven't had so much as an acknowledgement.

When you actually try to draw down your EST loan from HES there is always some excuse, 'documents weren't received' (even though you have an email to say they have received), 'you need to send us another declaration'. Everyone from HES ,I have talked to has worked from home. They do not seem to know much of why documents go missing!

Home Energy Scotland is the Scottish arm of Energy Savings Trust. They were really clear, good information, really helpful advisors administering a good scheme to help us make our houses warmer and beat climate change. The grant paid for 75% of my underfloor and loft insulation. I'm applying for a grant for EWI next. I would have given 5 stars but I was reimbursed 3 weeks later than was first stated. The application website is a bit clunky too.

Excellent customer support staff able and willing to provide help online and on the phone. I've docked one star as the new online Portal was not user friendly but hopefully feedback provided will be acted on to improve it for future applicants. The Home Energy Scotland loan and grant scheme is excellent and I'm sure I'll notice a significant saving in my heating cost and comfort next Winter - thank you.

I have never dealt with a more frustrating or useless organisation. Endless circular paperwork and phonecalls, huge delays of months in getting funding through. The website is completely useless and needlessly overcomplicated. Key information isn't given to you until you phone up to ask why nothing is happening. Documents are regularly lost and need to be re-sent over and over again.

Last review removed?
Difficult, stressful process and still waiting on money.
Website keep giving error message 'funding portal says....' site hangs and you lose info.
When Loan is agreed they ask you for further info. Why not ask all at one time?

When finally all is agreed the money isn't forwarded in the specified 10 days to buy the kit
You have to push back installation dates. Had to outlay a lot money to get ASHP ready.

If there is so much problem with cash flow within EST why do they force people to take Both Solar and ASHP?
I was marginally better taking Gas but that would have meant I couldn't go for Solar grant and Loan.

Further I don't understand how people on the ECO4 grant didn't seem to have any problems getting the Grant and Loan timely. Does their installer do all the paperwork and chasing the monies?