A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
Heat, Help, And Human Connection
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Ever wondered why your radiators sit under a window and your living room still feels cold? We sit down with Groundwork’s Green Doctor to unpack simple fixes that actually work, decode baffling energy bills, and map real routes to grants that can slash monthly costs without the jargon or the runaround.
We start with the power of place: Bread and Butter Thing hubs where a low-cost weekly shop meets trusted advice. From radiator foil and draft proofing to LEDs and electric blankets, we share small, proven changes that keep heat where you need it most. Then we step into bigger upgrades—loft insulation, ventilation, solar, and air source heat pumps—and explain how schemes like ECO4, the Great British Insulation Scheme, and local Warm Homes initiatives can fund them. A standout case shows a whole street cutting average bills from about £147 to roughly £47 a month after a coordinated retrofit, made possible by door-knocking, clear guidance, and patient support.
Billing clarity is a recurring theme. Credits and debits, seasonal estimates, and combined statements lead many households to overpay or underheat their homes. We talk through a stark example of an elderly resident thousands in credit while shivering indoors, and how one visit turned fear into confidence: money reclaimed, measures installed, warmth restored. Along the way we look at the human side—loneliness, anxiety, and how a friendly face can unlock help that online forms never could. We also challenge the language of “postcode lottery,” calling it what it is: postcode injustice. Access to funding and white goods varies wildly by council, so we argue for “no wrong door” locally and a national “tell me once” platform that matches people to support in minutes.
If your house feels colder than your budget can bear, you’ll leave with clear next steps: where to look for grants, how to get a bill explained, and which low-cost changes deliver quick wins. Join us, share this with a neighbour who needs it, and help more people find the hidden help on their doorstep. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us what support your area is missing.
Hello and welcome back to a slice of bread and butter with me, Vic, and Mark. We're from the Bread and Butter Think.
SPEAKER_00:We run a network of mobile food clubs that take surplus food from supermarkets, farms and factories, and we take it straight into communities where families are struggling to get by.
SPEAKER_01:For less than a tenner, our members get bags packed with fruit, veg, fridge food, covered staples. It's a weekly shop that helps stretch the budget and take some of the pressure off.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and our members are at the heart of everything that we do. They turn food into friendship and neighbours into community, and that's what makes us tick.
SPEAKER_01:And today it's Shamie joining us from Groundwork.
SPEAKER_02:We have a number of trusts across the UK. I am part of the Homes Retrofit and Fuel Poverty team. We generally look after people who are in fuel poverty, who are struggling with energy efficiency. You want to improve the homes and that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_00:What does that look like on a day-to-day basis?
SPEAKER_02:I started out as a green doctor. So we've got a fair-size green doctor team, and we like I say we cover the whole of Greater Manchester.
SPEAKER_00:What's a green doctor?
SPEAKER_02:A green doctor is a person who's qualified in energy efficiency. And what our green doctors do, they visit people in the community in their own homes, and we fit things like radiator foils, draft proofing, energy efficiency bulbs, and things like that. We assist people with their energy companies. For example, we helped a disabled gentleman get off prepay when it wasn't appropriate. People who were massively struggling with debt. Oh no, no, it's it absolutely works. I've got it all over my house and then it absolutely works.
SPEAKER_00:So you just got to put foil down the back of your radiators.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, the foil that you use to cook a chicken isn't the best. But I mean it would work. But yeah, we use high-quality foil that's made for that. If you think about most radiators are underneath a window, which is a really stupid place to put a radiator, half the heat is lost through the window.
SPEAKER_00:Why do they do that?
SPEAKER_02:I I would assume it's because of ease, or it's it would have been easy, easy to install. But yeah, external walls and radiators aren't the best combination, really.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's really odd. Okay. So you've been coming to our hubs. Which hubs have you been to? What was your experience?
SPEAKER_02:The hubs are brilliant. I really love the service that bread and butter provide. It's it's really, really good, really useful for a lot of people. I personally have visited loads of them. So I've done the one in Royon. I've gone quite regularly to the one at um St. Martin's in Droilsdon, same side. You know, I've met some of your staff and everything. It's really, really good. I think the two go hand in hand. Those people who are in fuel poverty are struggling to afford to eat.
SPEAKER_00:Are you a bit of a regular then, Jeremy?
SPEAKER_02:I am, yeah. It's very handy. I I I don't mind a bread and butter shop. Yeah, it's really good. Whenever there's a new venue, I get an email to say there's a new venue, and we make sure we go and visit most of them. Uh Cross Oldham, Manchester, same side, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:What is it that's good about it?
SPEAKER_02:Our main aim is to support people and and show people that there's help. We're all struggling at the moment with the cost of living. All of us are with energy crisis and Brexit, the B-word. But and it when someone is in that in the bread and butter venues, you know, they're there because they need a cheap shopping. So if we're able to talk to them and show them that there's support with fuel vouchers and energy efficiency measures and things like that, the cat the two kind of go hand in hand, I think.
SPEAKER_00:Definitely. So it sounds like you'd buy into our sort of vibe of face-to-face.
SPEAKER_02:I think people need that human connection, that interaction. Some people who we visit, they may not have had a conversation for a week or so, you know. You know, we visit a lot of vulnerable people who need to chat and bit of TLC. I can tell you about a lady, she's in her 80s, she'd had her pacemaker fitted, she was really unwell, her house was freezing. You could see your breath in her house. It was really, really bad. Anyway, it turned out she was actually in two and a half thousand pounds worth of credit. She'd been giving all the money to her energy company, she was getting bills through the door thinking, oh, this is what I owe, but it was actually credit. And no one had told her. So yeah, I mean, we we got a big chunk of her money back. We left some in, but she started putting her heating on there, and I was like, you know, two and a half thousand pounds is is a lot of money to be in credit. So, you know, we took an electric blanket and we did all the small measures, the radiator foil and all that stuff, and the draft excluders, and she's she's much better now, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Wow. We've talked to a lot of service providers recently, and everybody talks about the mental health status of people versus lack of money and how the two are so mixed up together.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, exactly. Yeah. One of the other things that we've been doing through a lot of the um people who we visited from the bread and butter at the same side, we've been assisting them to try and get energy efficiency measures through government funding, well, through the funding, so that eCall for the Great British Insulation Scheme. And all those are set to run out now in March after the budget. It's a very complicated process to go through. So that's one of the things we've been assisting with. I think there's going to be a different height of funding coming. So we'll we'll continue to give that to our incredible residents.
SPEAKER_00:When people that need it don't know about it or it's too complicated. My cynical gene goes, Are they really meant to be getting this?
SPEAKER_02:Absolutely, yes, they are. From Rochdale again, where we have managed to get nearly a full street retrofit through the home upgrade scheme. The majority of that street have had solar panels, air source, heat pumps, ventilation. They used to pay about 147 for gas and electric a month, and now they're paying 47-ish.
SPEAKER_00:The people on that street, how many of them knew that they could do this before you guys got involved?
SPEAKER_02:Well, this is the whole point. They didn't. So the way we had to engage them was by going out canvassing and door knocking.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:We identified that area, then we recognised that it was in need of some support.
SPEAKER_00:If I were just here as an individual thinking I'm paying too much for my energy bills, is there an obvious place to go to look?
SPEAKER_02:Um, if you're not getting any support through your local council, the GMCA have all that information, Greater Manchester Combined Authority. You can find a lot of stuff on their website. But your local council would be the place to go because I know after Eco 4, the energy company obligation, after that ends, which it will be set to end in March, there's going to be a rollout of well, the Warm Homes local programme should be running now, but each local authority is working that differently. So you need to contact your local council to see what support is in your area. Or you can contact us and we can find out for you.
SPEAKER_00:There's an NHS low-income scheme. So if if you're in a low-income home, you could qualify for this. But it's a really, really long application form. It's about 20 pages. There's no guarantees. I'm hoping yours is easier than that. Um that doesn't sound good, shall we?
SPEAKER_02:Um, well, like I say, it is complicated. What the right, you don't have to pay anything up front with the e call four scheme. The thing is, every person and every property is different, and it's down to an installer and a designer to decide if that property is eligible. And I can't make that judgment, but I can certainly tell you if a person is eligible.
SPEAKER_00:Right. You've got enough experience behind you to know whether or not somebody's a good fit, and it's rare that somebody you put forward would be put down, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. The Great Precision Installation Scheme sometimes requires a customer contribution. So if you were doing lofty insulation, you may need to pay a third towards it or something like that. But the ECO4 scheme is fully funded. As I say, all this is set to end in March and there'll be new stuff coming. So I'll make sure I fill you in on that at the time.
SPEAKER_00:Tell us about the rest of groundwork then. What else does ground work do?
SPEAKER_02:So we have a Green Skills Academy, we work with youth communities. In older in particular, we've been planting rain gardens, we do community gardens.
SPEAKER_00:What's a rain garden?
SPEAKER_02:Well, you know how much rain we get here.
SPEAKER_00:I know that. Yeah, it's just you're not growing a garden to attract more rain, are you?
SPEAKER_02:Well, it's a tiny garden that really loves rain, so it'll thrive in rain, essentially. Got you. We've also been running a water saving programme, which is brilliant, and we've saved so much water across businesses and schools by, you know, and checking it up for leaks and things. You know, we're going out with plumbers and fixing all that stuff. It's been really, really good.
SPEAKER_00:For people to get in touch, I guess it's through Green Doctor or come and see you at a bread and butter hub.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, yeah. Well, any bread and butter hub will know who we are, that's for sure. You can email us at energyworks at brownwork.org.uk.
SPEAKER_00:I'm gonna get onto the foil, but how on earth do you get to a position where you're two grand in credit with an energy company? How does the energy company uh actually allow that to happen?
SPEAKER_01:Well, there's a moral thing there for sure, but actually, energy bins bills are really complicated. I don't think that they're easy to understand. And you know, you're an accountant, so you understand debit and credit.
SPEAKER_00:Is that is that it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Many people don't, and they make you pay more than what you're meant to, because they're going, you know, especially in the summer, yeah, you use like hardly any, but they're gearing you up for the winter, so they're all about protecting themselves. And I can imagine how frightened that poor lady was, thinking that she was she's reading a bill wrong, it's going 500 quid or something, and she's like, Oh my god, I owe them 500 quid. I can't put my eating on. Like, what a horrible position. I'm now scared to ring them, all of that. So I can absolutely see that that would be a possibility because I just don't think that they're plain English, the bills at all.
SPEAKER_00:No, they aren't.
SPEAKER_01:We've had a different support service on before that said that you can ring up and have the bill explained to you.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. Anglian water.
SPEAKER_01:That just goes to show. And a water bill isn't as hard as, especially when you've got gas and electric together.
SPEAKER_00:Totally agree. Do you know what? I I wanted to say the same thing about the uh funding that you can get through Green Doctors and Chamoe as well, because it clearly needed a chamois because it's really complicated still. So it's not straightforward. And it goes back to that kind of cash plus thing as of saying there's cash available, but if the support services like Chamois and Green Doctors are not around, it's highly unlikely you're going to get it.
SPEAKER_01:Well, imagine in that situation I'm£2,000 in credit, I think I'm in debt, I get my£20 cash first, and I give it to the electric company to be 2,020 quid in credit.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I mean it sounds bonkers, but actually I think that that could happen.
SPEAKER_00:But could happen. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I'm going to take you away from your cash first before the the soapbox comes out. But I I think it goes back to the hidden help as well, right? Because before I spoke to Shammy, I didn't know half of the things that she was talking about. Not just the helpful tips like the foil, but also the uh great British insulation scheme, etc. I didn't know they existed. Pretty sure a lot of people don't.
SPEAKER_01:No, agreed. And groundwork is there's lots of groundworks, and they all have different geography. So we also work with groundwork up in the northeast, and they've done some phenomenal work similar to Chamois, yeah, up with our communities up there. So I have been aware of them for a while, but you never quite understand the extent of their support.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because it's so broad and it's just so people-centred, isn't it? It depends on what you present with. They pull a different trick out of the bag, don't they, really?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So Shammy's another great example of one of the services that comes into our HubSpic, but we've had a lot of episodes over December and January on services that come into the hubs. Why are we highlighting so many other services now?
SPEAKER_01:Because life is so hard at this time of year. Everybody needs the services. And just to give people an example of how many services are out there, bread and butter alone in the last year have worked with 206 different service providers to bring this support to people. And we don't even touch the tip of the iceberg. So if we can do anything to raise more awareness of the support that people can get, then why wouldn't we?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's fair. So I I guess we're highlighting just how many of those services are needed and just why it's so important at this time of year.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's February and it's absolutely freezing.
SPEAKER_00:It is.
SPEAKER_01:I think February is one of the hardest months, actually, because you kind of you've ready for spring, like you've had enough of Christmas is long gone. Any kind of happy memories from Christmas are done, and then you've survived January, and then February is just it's the shortest month for a reason because it's the rubbishest month.
SPEAKER_00:Apologies to everybody that celebrates their birthday in February, but there you go.
SPEAKER_01:Well, I didn't know that I was like uh had strong opinions about months, but clearly I do.
SPEAKER_00:I know, it's just we we find out more and more about them on a weekly basis.
SPEAKER_01:Very strange video think of this. So thinking about um groundworks, I wanted to put something to you, Mark, because we quite often talk about a postcode lottery, and we know that there's groundworks all over the place and all this, and this is not a go-t, groundwork. It's I want us to think about our language because I've got a problem with a postcode lottery.
SPEAKER_00:Because there is one.
SPEAKER_01:Well, well, because there is one, right? But then also because do you not feel like a lottery implies that you're winning something and it could be a good thing? And we're always using it in a really negative way.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's fair. That's fair, but I I I I suppose I'm picking up common language that people use. So you hear about the postcode lottery for, I don't know, uh schools, for example. Again, same thing. Where some win, some lose because they're in the right catchment areas for schools. Agreed. So come on then, you you're gonna have to give me a better phrase than postcode lottery then. So I've um I'm waiting for your pitch.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's not really a pitch. I've been doing a little bit of research with a helpful AI tool, and uh it came up with postcode penalty, yeah, postcode disadvantage, okay, postcode inequality, postcode randomizer, postcode injustice.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's a nice one.
SPEAKER_01:You know, we don't have to change our language on this. I know that it's in the mainstream, the postcode lottery, but I was driving along as I do, and I was just like, Yeah. I think it's not right because nobody's winning. It's always about someone losing.
SPEAKER_00:It's the inconsistency, right? Because the difficulty is that if you look at it piece by piece for what's offered in each local authority, like let's say there's a hundred things, some are good, some are not so good. The difficulty that you have is that there's no clear benchmark. So it's like dependent on which circumstances you are in, you may be better off in one borough to the next. Sam and Jackie were doing it. Yeah. Sam and Jackie, just before Christmas on the podcast, we're talking about they're in neighbouring boroughs and one got white goods and the other one didn't.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. But that's just there's no lottery in this. It's like the person that's losing is losing.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I just thought it was interesting because that's why we have to work with so many service providers. That's why we have to kind of, you know, it's not there's not like the universal support system out there that everybody can access. And that's why we work really hard to showcase the work of groundwork and and all of the other services that we've been showcasing, because we don't know which of our members can go for what.
SPEAKER_00:So this goes back to what the guys at Anglian Water were saying though as well, right? The ask me once or tell me once, and collecting the data, and if there was a national platform to actually put this in and say, where you could be eligible for dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, that would make life so much simpler, and that should not be beyond the pale of government right now.
SPEAKER_01:No, and even simpler than that is the local authorities should be doing no wrong door. So wherever you present in the local authority, they should be able to direct you to the services that you need.
SPEAKER_00:Listen, I totally get you with that, Vic, but the no wrong door assumes that everybody's equal, right? And if go back to Sam and Jackie, the no wrong door doesn't fix the fact that Jackie couldn't get a fridge, but Sam could Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. But you know, even at the no wrong door level, we're not getting it right. Yeah, is kind of my point.
SPEAKER_00:I get that.
SPEAKER_01:Some councils are brilliant at it, and some less so. And again, that's a postcode injustice, depending on which council you get.
SPEAKER_00:You've set homework again this week. Answers on a postcode, by the way. By email us at podcast at bread and butterthing.org. If you've got a better idea, by all means, we'll always listen.
SPEAKER_01:Fair. This is Mark saying, I don't like your idea, Vic. It's staying his postcode lottery.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my god, you've known it too long.
SPEAKER_01:It's fine. I just thought it was I just thought I'd throw a little grenade in to see how you responded. So if you'd like to know more about the bread and butter thing and what we get up to, you can find us at TeamTBBT on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, LinkedIn, online at breadandbutthing.org.
SPEAKER_00:And if you have any feedback or thoughts on the podcast or you'd like to come and interfere like Vic does, drop us an email at podcast at breadandbutterthing.org.
SPEAKER_01:And we're always open to new members at all of our hubs. So if you or someone you know would benefit from our affordable food scheme, you can find the nearest hub on the becoming member pages of the website.
SPEAKER_00:And please do all those things that podcasts always ask you to do. Like us, subscribe to us, leave us a review, share us with your friends, and chat about us on social. And let's get our numbers up.
SPEAKER_01:See ya.
SPEAKER_00:See you next time.
