Fuel poverty kills thousands of people in the UK each winter. It means being unable to afford to heat a home to a safe and comfortable level, typically when 10% or more of household net income is spent on fuel. It damages our health, wellbeing and educational attainment and makes it hard for people to participate in society and the economy. It is estimated that around 7 million UK households, rising to 10 million by this winter, are in the grip of fuel poverty. This is a crisis which is deeply impacting many in society and we recognise the associated benefit of organisations such as Axewoods, and the help that we – in collaboration with our clients – can offer alongside our daily service offering and routine maintenance.

Axewoods is a charitable organisation originally formed to assist people suffering from fuel poverty in rural Devon and surrounding areas. They seek opportunities to generate timber products and logs from private estates, organisations and individuals, collecting and processing the material into seasoned logs for use by struggling householders.

Their activities have developed to now include workshops and rural crafts skills days for Schools, underprivileged groups, minority groups and dementia sufferers. We produce timber and timber products routinely from the Highways estate, Environment Agency estate and other commercial sites and we have engaged our clients with the offering of these products to Axewoods, as well as extending our assistance to Axewoods in handling and processing material more efficiently and productively.

Now that tree cutting season is here - we are looking forward to supporting them during winter 2022/23. Their model has been recognised by other organisations who see similar issues in other rural areas, and we are now engaging with ‘Northumberland Log Banks’ in Northumberland to see if we can offer similar assistance/support across other areas.

More info on the Log Bank can be found here.