The Solas Scotland Group has its origins 21 years ago in a community initiative set up in Dumbarton to provide insulation to vulnerable households. Over the years, we have evolved into one of the most respected community businesses in Scotland.
We were one of the first installers to be accredited under the Government's HEES insulation programme which began in 1991 and continue our association through all the changes in the scheme right up to the present day. During these early years we worked mainly with Local Authorities targetting the Government grants at the most vulnerable households and for owner occupiers who qualified for assistance. Households living in Argyll posed a particular problem since the grant available didn't cover the additional costs incurred by travelling to these jobs. We successfully applied for funding from the National Lottery which allowed us to create a hardship fund which allowed needy families to receive the insulation.
The transfer of council tenants to housing associations gave us the opportunity to create new partnerships with many of the housing associations to continue to bring their tenants government grant funding - originally directly and latterly through Communities Scotland.
In 1998 we opened a satellite office in Greenock. Called INVEST (Inverclyde Energy Saving Team - later Inverclyde Energy and Safety Team) this was a partnership between Solas Insulation and Inverclyde Council aimed at improving the insulation in all council homes to the current best standard and providing jobs and training for Inverclyde residents.
In order to help in our other aim of creating jobs and training, we took the step in 2000 of becoming a City & Guilds Approved Training Centre to provide NVQ's in our industry discipline.
As it became apparent that quality energy advice had an extremely significant part to play in reducing energy use, Solas developed an innovative energy advice, training and support service for delivery to households. Along with our clients we soon realised that this service could be expanded to include advice on home safety and security with an option of relevant upgrades for home security.
These services were so well received that in order to maximise their effectiveness, a seperate company - Solas Assist was established.
Along with our funding partnership with central and local government, Solas have been successful in getting funding for our clients from a wide range of sources. INVEST received E.U. funding through the Strathclyde European Partnership in order to visit every household in Port Glasgow, Communities Scotland has funded both insulation and safety/security work in a large number of Housing associations and the fuel utilities have and are funding energy efficiency measures for all households.
We have just created the first Local Energy Saving Scheme (LESS) in partnership with West Dunbartonshire Council and we are confident that this iniative will roll out to other areas over the coming months. Click here to read about LESS
We are currently preparing for the introduction at the turn of the year of Energy Performance Certificates (EPC's) and are negotiating a partnership which will allow us to offer a nation-wide service to landlords.
In future, we expect to play an important role in making renewable energy more readily available to households. We're busy putting the partnerships in place and have commissioned work from Caledonian University to examine how Solas can best provide a service.
Over the years Solas have received a large number of awards. These include a National Training Award for Scotland and a separate one for Britain, a Guardian Public Service Award (again Britain-wide), an Installer Service Award from the Government's insulation scheme and several awards from Scottish Enterprise for many aspects of business excellence.
