Helping to cut bills pays off as company set to grow

ENER-G Switch2 is working to ensure that some of Britain's poorest people don't face crippling energy bills.

It has also secured a contract to work on the Stratford Eye, a giant building which is part of east London's "facelift" ahead of the 2012 Olympics. The company yesterday revealed that it plans to increase its staff numbers from 90 to 110 over the next year.

ENER-G Switch 2, which has doubled its turnover over the past three years to 9m, is moving from Cullingworth, near Bradford, to 6,500 sq ft offices at the Waterfront, in Salts Mill Road, in Saltaire.

ENER-G Switch2 is one of the UK's biggest suppliers of metering and billing technologies and services for multi-tenancy buildings.

It helps residential and business customers to monitor and control their water and energy consumption. As a result, they get smaller bills.

The company, which was founded in 1980, initially provided a metering and maintenance service for local authority clients who ran large district heating schemes. In recent years, it has grown dramatically as more landlords become aware of the need to conserve energy.

Its services include the design, installation, operation and maintenance of "green" communal energy schemes for both public and private sector clients. Its clients include Berkeley Homes, Hyde Housing Association and Gentoo, as well as councils, social landlords and public and private sector organisations.

It has worked on energy-saving projects in Barnsley and Sheffield to ensure that people on low incomes receive smaller fuel bills.

The company will keep its 4,000 sq ft of warehouse space in Cullingworth. It aims to move the warehousing and assembly operation into larger premises within the next year.

Jayne Clare, the managing director, said the company had already beaten targets set in its five-year growth plan.

She aimed to secure more long-term service contracts to ensure it keeps growing.

Ms Clare said yesterday: "The new office will provide 50 per cent more space to enable the continued growth of our business.

"It will lead to the creation of up to 12 office-based jobs over the next year. We will also be expanding our 40-strong national engineering team."

The business began life in Cullingworth as Mainmet and had a number of changes in ownership and name until December 2003, when the

current directors, Jayne Clare and Chris Fortes, led a management buyout team that created Switch2 Energy Solutions. This was sold to UK renewable and energy efficiency group ENER-G in December 2007. Both directors remained in the business.

Mr Fortes, who is the financial director for ENER-G Switch2 commented: "Being part of the ENER-G group, we have the resources to finance capital projects.

"We also have access to energy generation technologies such

as combined heat and power that can provide a complete energy service for our customers.

"This is enabling us to tackle more ambitious projects and is driving our growth."

The company has strong links with the education sector.

It recently carried out work to monitor cooling and heating supplies at Coventry University.

The company plans to expand its Yorkshire operations by working with social landlords to reduce the number of people who struggle to pay their energy bills.

Benefits of green technology

Millions of people struggle to pay their energy bills each month.

ENER-G Switch2 designs, installs and maintains "green" communal energy schemes. These schemes give homeowners the chance to benefit from centrally generated heating, hot water and electricity.

The renewable energy sources could include biomass boilers – using wood chips – solar heating and sometimes waste heat from nearby industry.

To ensure that each household connected to the system pays only for the energy it uses, the supply is automatically metered to produce a monthly bill.

There is growing political pressure for concerted action to cut energy waste.

Communal energy systems are regarded as making a significant contribution towards global targets for reducing the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere.