April update — Partnership with Utility Aid

1. Who are Utility Aid?

Utility Aid has been operating for over 20 years, working exclusively with charities and not-for-profit organisations. Their client base spans:

• Charities of every size
• Housing associations
• Schools
• Churches
• Community groups
• Frontline support services

Their service is free at the point of use to charities — they’re paid by the energy suppliers when a contract is placed, not by you.

2. Energy procurement & switching

Utility Aid will run a comparison across their panel of suppliers, present the options, and explain the trade-off between a longer fixed term (more budgeting certainty) and a flexible contract (potentially cheaper but moves with the wholesale market).

Three ways they help groups buy energy:

• Online switching for single-meter sites — a streamlined service for the typical village hall or community centre with one gas meter and one electricity meter.
• Collective purchasing agreements — clubbing together with other charities to negotiate better rates than any single organisation could alone.
• Account management — ongoing oversight for groups with multiple sites or complex meter arrangements.

3. Catching billing errors

Utility bills are notoriously easy to get wrong — estimated reads that drift further from reality every quarter, the wrong meter assigned to your account, standing charges applied to a meter that’s no longer there, VAT charged at 20% when it should be 5%. Utility Aid’s bill validation team will audit your bills against actual meter reads, contract terms, and the VAT rates you should have been on, then raise any disputes with the supplier on your behalf.

4. Charitable VAT relief on energy

This is the one we’d most like every committee to read. Charities and not-for-profit organisations can qualify for the reduced 5% VAT rate on gas and electricity used for non-business purposes — instead of the standard 20%. On a typical community-venue bill that’s a meaningful saving every quarter.

To claim it you have to submit a VAT declaration to your supplier; they don’t apply it automatically. Many community venues have been overpaying for years without realising. The free consultancy session covers checking whether the correct VAT rate is being charged on your current bills and explaining what to do if it isn’t.

5. Net zero planning & carbon reporting

Utility Aid have a dedicated net-zero team that can produce a tailored roadmap for your building, plus carbon reporting for groups that need to evidence emissions reductions to funders, trustees or regulators. They’ll talk you through where the easy wins are (LED retrofits, controls, insulation), what’s a medium-term project (heat pumps, solar PV), and what grant funding is realistically available.

6. How to take advantage

If any of the above sounds useful, drop us a line and we’ll introduce you to the Utility Aid team. The free consultancy session is no-obligation — have a recent gas or electricity bill to hand if you have one, but it’s not essential to start.

You don’t need to switch suppliers, change anything in LemonBooking, or commit to anything. Even just having them check your VAT rate could save your venue hundreds a year.