# Episode 8: Money and energy saving tips, Warm Hubs and scams
The Surrey County Council Communications and Engagement team are pleased to present the Surrey Matters podcast. Going behind the scenes of Surrey County Council, the county and the people who bring services to you.
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Episode 8 – Money and energy saving tips, Warm Hubs and scams
As energy bills rise, we found out about energy and money saving tips, grants available to make your home more energy efficient. How to keep safe when keeping warm, what and where new Warm Hubs are in Surrey, and about the latest scams to beware of.
- Katie Sargent: Surrey County Council. Gives us some quick energy and money saving tips. Working from home or going into the office?
- Rebecca Venn: Action Surrey. Explains about some grants available to residents to improve their home's energy efficiency.
- Tarina Webber: Surrey Fire and Rescue. Whilst we're trying to keep warm and save money, need to make sure we aren't creating a fire risk. What you need to know about electric blankets!
- Ben McCallan: Surrey County Council. Tells us about Warm Hubs that have been launched in communities across Surrey, a place to pop-in, get warm and meet others whilst also getting some free energy saving advice
- Linda Crowley: Trading Standards. Alerts us to some Cost-of-Living scams to look out for.
We hope you enjoy the show. If you have some ideas for an interesting podcast story, please send us an email with the subject line 'Surrey Matters Podcast' to surreymatters@surreycc.gov.uk.
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Episode 8 transcript
Welcome to episode eight of the Surrey Matters podcast. Going behind the scenes meeting the people bringing services to you, talking to residents about what matters to them and their communities and letting you know what's going on in your county. Brought to you by the Surrey County Council communications team.
With with rising energy bills and the cost of living crisis I went to find some energy saving tips and tricks to save you money, some grants available to make your home more energy efficient and warmer and Surrey Fire and Rescue also gave me some safety advice to be aware of when we're trying to keep warm on the cheap, what you need to know about electric blankets! I also got details of some of the latest scams out there and spoke to someone about new Warm Hubs that are being set up by communities across Surrey. these are going to be offering a warm welcome space for people. So put on another jumper and let's get started!
Katie Sargent Surrey County Council
First up some energy saving hints and tips to save you money and something to consider when working from home. Good morning I'm here with Katie Sargent from Surrey County Council. Good morning Katie how are you? I'm well thank you. Can you just tell the listeners who you are and what your job title is? I'm Katie Sargent I'm the Greener Futures Group Manager at Surrey County Council and my role is to increase the work that Surrey is doing to try and prevent climate change and to help residents to reduce their energy bills make savings on their bills and also to bring more renewable energy such as solar into the county. So I guess the fact that you're giving advice on energy saving tips I bet people are listening to you right now aren't they? where maybe they might not really have paid any attention so what's been the most surprising energy saving tip that you've seen that maybe you didn't think was something that we could all do? I think what we're seeing at the moment with international pressures is that the unit cost of both gas and electricity has gone up a lot and it will continue to rise unfortunately, and we know that the cost of gas in particular is increasing. Gas has always been a very low unit cost but it is going up and it will continue to rise so I think the thing that surprises me is actually how much people can save by making small changes in the way they heat and power their homes particularly heating homes and heating hot water for baths and showers. So anything that you can do to make your home more energy efficient or insulated that will obviously save your efficiency amount of heat you need to use and anything that you can do to reduce the amount of hot water that you need in your home will have a massive impact on your energy bills. People really need to spend more time thinking about how they can insulate their homes. So that's you know homes generally in this country are not particularly well insulated yeah. So simple things like loft insulation. If you have a loft space putting insulation in there will stop the heat from escaping through your roof. If you have a hot water tank, not everyone does these days, but if you do, then heating that tank, heating the pipe work from the tank will make a big big difference and then and then smaller measures such as draught proofing your windows and your doors. What exactly is that draught proofing? If you can see any light between your window and your window frame or your door and your door frame then that means that hot air is escaping and cold air is entering. Which isn't great because we we don't want to be heating the outside of our homes. But you can buy from most DIY shops draught proofing strips, they're really quite cheap so usually around £10 pounds a roll. And can you still open your window? Yeah absolutely so you just apply it to the frame and have it pushing against the window so that you could get that gap isn't there anymore and you can still open your windows and doors. But according to the Energy Saving Trust this could save as much as £125 a year on your energy bills at really very little cost so I think the first thing you need to be thinking about is how can you stop heat and heat from hot water escaping from your home. If you have a homes which is built after 1950 and you have cavity walls, having the cavity between the two layers of brickwork insulated with cavity wall insulation only costs a couple of £100 pounds. If you're in receipt of benefits then you could probably have it done for free. So that's probably the place to start before anything.
So a lot more people Katie are working from home and maybe not going into the office or having that sort of dilemma of is it gonna be cheaper for me to go into the office. So what would be your advice if people are working from home? is there any advice you could give them about ways they could stay warm, but maybe you know save some money. Yeah absolutely I think that this is you know people are really seeing that their work style their work patterns have changed and there's a big risk there as well because if you're working in one room in your home it's cold and you're putting your boiler on then you actually heating a whole house when actually you're just in in one area and one thing you can do obviously the best solution there is to not have your heating on and to use blankets jumpers so maybe even an electric blanket, something that you can plug in to the electricity. It uses a very small amount of electricity and that can keep you warm. Yeah. When it's really really cold and your fingers are freezing then then obviously you it is important to stay warm and so a good solution there, is to have thermostatic radiator valves also known as TRVs, so these are connected to your radiators, so you can go around the house and turn all of your radiators off apart from the room that you're in. So the heating will be just used in that one room and obviously the energy consumption will be a lot lower.
And then there are some everyday tips although I think with washing machines and kettles can you just tell us a little bit more about that because I think some of the savings that people might be quite surprised about. Because I know that one of the ones that surprised me was the putting all your plugs to standby and so I've gone round the whole house and done that and switched them all off and I've never even thought of that before. So have you got some other top tips with monetary savings? Yeah absolutely. So I've talked a lot about heating and hot water but the unit cost of electricity is also going up so it's really important that you try and save electricity and it tends to be that any use of electricity to heat water uses a lot, it's quite surprising actually. So your washing machines and your kettles they and some people use the immersion function on their hot water, so that means that the hot water for shower and bath is heated by electricity, which is really really expensive. And I would only recommend you do that if you've got a problem with your boiler. So for example if you avoid using your tumble dryer that could cost you £70 a year. If you switch your appliances off standby mode that could, around the house, that can save you £65 a year if you reduce the temperature on your washing machine and wash at 30 degrees and maybe do one less wash a week that could save you about £35 a year. Kettle uses loads of energy luckily most people don't have their kettle on all the time but the other thing is if you just heat the amount of water that you need in your kettle rather than filling the whole kettle then that could save you about £43 pounds a year. So a lot of small changes really will add up. And it's just I think we're all beginning to think a bit more aren't we ? about some of these things, whereas I think we took it for granted and I think we're all in that zone now.
So are there any other longer term solutions that the Greener Futures Team are you are recommending ? and this isn't for everybody because I think some people may feel that there's quite a bit of money that needs to be invested to do this. So I know for instance I've got a boiler, and if I was to sort of start making this house greener and warmer what would should I be installing. Yeah it's a really good question. So yeah there are some quick and easy things you can do that will save money. So insulation should always be your first port of call and top of your list. If you are replacing your boilers so bear in mind that you know current standard gas boilers are going to be phased out. There is a move towards installing heat pumps in the place of boilers. So this is it's basically a low carbon electric form of heating but it's it's switching you from gas to electricity and but it's much more efficient than the standard boiler. Heat pumps are still a little bit more expensive than boilers but as we see the cost of gas creeping up and catching up with electricity and then probably overtaking it at some point, then then heat pumps will be become much more affordable. And if you live in an off gas community so if you currently heat your home with oil then having a heat pump is is a really good solution because oil the customer is much more expensive than the cost of electricity so I totally would recommend anyone who isn't on gas to switch to heat pump. Do we know how many people in Surrey have oil heating?. Yeah so its usually people in rural communities. It's not such a big issue for urban areas but heat pumps are something I think everyone could consider particularly if you have a roof space that would be suitable for solar PV. Because what you would be doing there is producing your own electricity and then using that to heat your home. So even if you're not considering putting heat pumps in and you have a nice big south facing roof the cost of solar has come down phenomenally in the last sort of 10 years. It now has a payback of somewhere around four or five years. That payback will get even smaller as the cost of electricity goes up. So we have run a successful scheme in the past where we've offered slightly subsidised rates for homeowners who wanted to purchase solar and we'll be looking to run a similar scheme in the future. So I would recommend that any resident who's considering solar heat pumps goes to our website for more advice. When you say our website which website would that be? So if you go to Surrey website and type in "climate change" that will take you to all of the pages all of the support that we have for residents. So that's surreycc.gov.uk/climatechange. Thanks for your time today Katie and I'm gonna run down to the shops this weekend and get some draught excluding tape for my windows I think and hopefully I'll be roasty toasty warm next week when I work from home.
Rebecca Venn Action Surrey
Hi there I'm here with Rebecca Venn. Hi Rebecca how are you? Yes good thank you. So I'm part of the Environmental Projects Team at ThamesWey Group I am part of the Environmental Projects team and I head up a project called Action Surrey. And that is an Energy Efficiency Advice Service that has been running since 2013 so nearly ten years. We've recently been working with Surrey County Council and from what is gonna be a big programme of works on the decarbonization for homes across Surrey. And the grant I'll be talking about today is a part of that big programme. So what's this grant then? So it's called sustainable warmth and it's kind of split into two sections. And so On-gas properties and off-gas. So On-gas literally means your primary heat source is mains gas connected to mains gas and that is what we used to heat your home. If not if you're Off-gas then it's gonna be electric, oil, coal whatever else it is that's not mains gas basically. So On-gas Off-gas we've got that now. So we've got funding for both and it's essentially, where it's come from is the third phase of these kind of projects that launched for 2020 when the Government announced the Green homes Grant. OK so what's the Grant for then? So its for low income houses, households I should say with low energy efficiency ratings for their properties. And what do you mean by low income? Just so we can be clear. Low Income so it's either means tested benefits being received into the household or a gross annual household income before you take any deductions or any tax off of £31,000 or below. But we can also consider household costs in terms of mortgage and council tax payments. If you're a little bit over the £31,000 but if you take your mortgage and your council tax off and that brings it below £20,000 that's also a route to eligibility as well. OK so that's the eligibility, so what does the grant do . So it offers insulation and renewables to these houses to try and increase…and what do you mean by renewables sorry? We can do solar panels so we can do solar PV which generates electricity or solar thermal which generates hot water. Sorry what's Solar PV? Photovoltaic's which basically means it generates electricity in basic terms. And those are the panels that sit on peoples roofs ? Yes those are the ones that you'll see most the time yeah, the kind of flat panels. And then there's also Solar Thermal which kinda look like tubes I suppose. And then insulation, so anything from cavity wall or external side wall depending on whichever property has loft insulation, under floor if you have a suspended floor or it is a park home then park home external wall. Because we have just been talking with Katie Sargent she was saying that one of the, if you were to start anywhere it would be about insulating your home whether that's your loft or your cavity walls and stuff so this is now a grant that will help people to do that sort of thing. So how does someone apply for this grant? and how long does it take and is there an end date, and all that sort of admin side of it I guess. Yes the admin side - yeah of course so on our website which is actionsurrey.org we have a Grant homepage on there so people can pop on and there's actually application form they can download all the information on there. Fact sheets FAQ privacy notice of how we use all the information that they give us, and they can submit their application form directly to us or it is call on 0800-783-2503. And particularly for those residents who perhaps don't use the Internet we can post out a pack to them and they can fill out in that way. And so the essentially they declare their low income status and we will ask for some kind of proof of that and proof of address and then once we've verified that residence we will then put them through to an installer for the initial survey that would tell us what kind of measures that household would benefit from. So is that contractors that you will have on your books? Yes that we're in agreement with you. And then in terms of the time scale for each household it's very hard to say because it depends entirely on what measures might be going in. If it's sort of loft only it's obviously quicker than external wall installation for example and the final deadline for all installations is 31 of March 2023 so we don't have long. Alright and how much are we talking about in terms of grants or do they vary depending on what work is needed. Yeah varies based on the On-gas and Off-gas as well so On-gas properties can receive in the region of £10,000 pounds I say in the region because we work on an average basis so if a house is only having the loft it's not gonna reach £10,000 pounds but any external wall installation might go over. That doesn't mean that we can't go over , that we cannot fund it, but yes the average balances out across project and then for the Off-gas properties it's kind of a sliding scale between £10,000 and £25,000 based on your energy performance rating. But you sign up and what fuel type you're using whether that be electrical oil for example. And information is on www.actionsurrey.org . Can you just say the telephone number again yes sure 0800-783-2503. Thanks for your time Rebecca. Not at all thanks very much.
Tarina Webber Surrey Fire and Rescue Service.
Next up I spoke with Tarina Webber from Surrey Fire and Rescue. So the reason we wanted to talk to you today, and to Surrey residents, was that we've been hearing lots of things about people trying to save money, not turning on their heating or maybe doing some different things around trying to keep warm because of the cost of living crisis that we're hearing so much about. So, but some of these things that people are swapping to are not are not very safe are they Tarina? Obviously with winter coming in people are going start changing their habits on how to keep warm and things so one of the main concerns will be that people are going to be using things like open fires. Things that we have concerns around that is that they've got the correct fire guards in place. One of the big concerns is carbon monoxide poisoning, so people don't realise they seem to think that you may only get that from a faulty boiler or gas appliance but that's not the case. You could also get it from wood burning if they're not been cleaned properly or with wood burning stoves and fires just general carbon monoxide build up. So we do want people to make sure they have got working carbon monoxide alarms in their homes. If you've got the working carbon monoxide alarms they should be tested regularly there's a big button on them to test them. Where can people get these alarms ? You can get them in your general Argos B&Q your hardware stores. If the home belongs to people that are vulnerable then we can go and do safe and well visits for these people. We go out to them and we can supply them free of charge. People are using candles more they may forget them and walk away. You should never leave a candle unattended. They should always be never left on a window ledge near curtains or blinds. Always you know safe not anywhere where young children or cats and dogs with their tails can get to them things like that. And you know if you're leaving the property blow it out. So we do have concerns around the candles now. Another thing we have concerns about is people might think it's cheaper to run their white goods at night go to bed put on the tumble the washing machine the dishwasher. They think they can do it at bedtime actually we would prefer you didn't do that. We still maintain we'd rather you did that in the daytime when you are awake and alert and are able to be there for anything if it goes wrong as opposed to going to bed and not being up. What do you mean by going wrong? As in if something was to overheat if there's an electrical fault and it was to catch fire. Anything anything to do with electrical we want to minimise. We always say to people when you go to bed at night switch off as many sockets as you can if you don't need it on to switch it off because you're minimising night time risk when you're asleep and you're not there to deal with anything. Yes. So for example in my home we pretty much just leave on the fridge freezer at night. The microwave that gets switched off everything gets switched off that you don't need on TVs everything all get switched off at the socket. Always charge your phones before bedtime the average phone takes about two hours to charge you're asleep for about 8 hours so that's potentially 6 hours every night that you're overcharging a phone. Unplug it leave on the side never leave it under a pillow because it can overheat and smother. Just have as much as possible switched off at night especially because this is dead electricity that you're paying for. If you don't need it on then switch off just turn everything off at bedtime. And you mentioned more people probably now having open fires and using their chimneys, is there any advice around chimneys that you would give ? Yes get them cleaned regularly again you can have the build up there which could cause carbon monoxide poisoning that we were discussing so have them regularly checked. They should be done once a year to make sure they are in working order. So fireguards if you go to bed you've got the fire burning please don't just have an open fire burning, you know the embers could drop out of there. Candles some people may use candles as warmth so again safety around them. Again another thing we're finding is especially with the elderly they are putting all their life into one room and they stop using all the other rooms. So they don't have to heat them, they then may use the one room and they may start pulling out old electric fires old fan heaters we don't want them near anything that can catch light we need to know these fires are in good working order and you know they're not really old . Again as they could catch alight. So it's having the correct heaters in good working order and not near anything that can catch light for them and you know flowing clothes things like that. So I've heard there's been an increased sale of electric blankets ? What we say with electric blanket is if it's over 10 years old it should really be replaced so would rather it was replaced. Storage of an electric blanket when you're not using it don't put it away folded because you're folding the wiring inside which is kinking. When you store an electric blanket roll it don't fold it so that you're not causing any damage to the wiring. Don't leave an electric blanket on keep it on constantly. They are different some are just to heat the bed before you get in you switch it off and then get into bed some are over blankets. It depends on the actual blanket you've got, just use it correctly as per the manufacturers instructions are. Just make sure they're in good working order with no bent showing wires. Water bottles have you got any advice on hot water bottles? Hot water bottles are fine obviously you've just got make sure there's no leakages because you don't want burns and scalds, but no hot water bottles are absolutely fine to use. So these Safe and Well visits we've established are free and where can people find information about those is it online? Yes we have it all online yes you can go online Safety at home (Surrey Fire and Rescue) - Surrey County Council (surreycc.gov.uk) and you can click into the Safe and Well visits. I just wanted to back to the point about the hot water bottles because lots of people use the wheat bags. People need to be careful about the wheat bags with the overheating of them in the microwave, that they can explode. So you have to be really careful with Wheat Bags not to overheat them. Right and what does that mean ? not putting them on a higher temperature or not for so long ? Too long – or too high a temperature or doing it for too long. You know they can overheat and have little explosion so just be careful with the Wheat Bags. So lots of things to think about there to make sure we stay safe while keeping warm and on the subject of keeping warm Ben McCallan told me about the launch of Warm Hub spaces for people to drop in and take off the chill in Surrey.
Ben McCallan Surrey County Council
So what are these Warm Hubs then Ben ? We've been working with the diocese with community groups with Surrey libraries to offer spaces that provide somewhere people can get out of their hard to heat homes go warm up have a hot drink and potentially get some energy and debt advice to help them through the winter. It's really important thing to mention is that across the UK millions of people are gonna be struggling and here in Surrey that's no different we have thousands of residents struggling including people who have never struggled to pay bills before so I think it is really important to emphasise that they really shouldn't be any stigma involved here and this is a space to go and access if you are in any way need of help so please do go and take advantage of it. You can go there and get a hot drink and there's activities at lots of spaces and as I said there is potentially hot meals on offer as well. On top of this what we'll be doing is providing through some of the hubs little bits and pieces that can help residents to stay warm so for example hot water flasks that you can fill up at the space, hot water bottles, gloves and thick socks and we'll have trained energy advisors on site at lots of the hubs. To accompany that what we've done across the last couple of months is we're in the process of building our energy advice tool for Surrey which takes their own personal circumstances then offers you advice on how you can cut energy use and where you can find funding support. Presumably they can meet other people as well I guess? Exactly they offer a really good opportunity for people we might feel isolated to get out and about. Especially if you're in a hard to heat home. The cold can bring a lot of issues with damp such as respiratory illness as well, so it's a really good opportunity for people to get out and about, go and socialise with other people get a bit of human interaction. So just basically a nice warm welcome for people across the county. Yeah. Is this free of charge, or you know you're talking about cup of tea is it all free or do people have to pay what's the situation? Yeah well as Surrey County Council we worked with a lot of partners across the county to try and make sure that we are offering as much as we can for free so we tried to offer them as much support as we can to facilitate this network of hubs opening up. In almost all cases it will be free to get in free to get a hot drink some of the places are going above and beyond, if they can, so offering things like soup and a roll or a hot meal. Largely we're trying not to charge there are a couple of spaces which charge a membership fee they're pretty low the membership fees and typically what they do is they offer extra activities on top so that rather people being stuck at home in a cold house they can get out and actually do something, that's you know on the fun side over winter as well.
And how many of these Warm Hubs have we got at the moment? Lots actually, so as I say we worked with a lot of partners from the district and borough council and then the town councils parish councils are the diocese at Guildford, community groups and charities and I think we're running somewhere around 65 at the moment that have put application in to be part of the network and this still I think probably 10 to 20 likely to open up. So yeah there's quite a lot we have most of the county covered. I think so most of them should be within walking distance of people. Some of them are open all day some of them are open all day everyday and some of them offer one session a week. What's been great in some of the locations where lots of the community groups have teamed up so you get the spaces alternating days, so they try to cover as many days as possible across the week. To make sure there is somewhere people can go that is relatively nearby if they need to get out there hard to heat home. And are they ready now these Warm Hubs are they open now? Some of them are open now it does depend some of them are still trying to finalise the offer. I mean obviously this is not necessary that something to be that thankful for because its as an impact of climate change and a changing planet. But it's November now and we're still seeing temperatures are around 15 to 18 degrees so the later on-set of the cold weather has provided a bit of respite with energy bills as high as they've gone. But errr we don't know when the weather is gonna turn so yeah we're looking to do what we can to get them open as soon as possible. And where can people find out where their nearest Warm Hub is? We've created a map as well as a more accessible list for people ordered by district and borough. So if you go on the Surrey County Council website you can find your nearest location and type in surreycc.gov.uk/warm hubs you'll find there's a page showing you a map that you can find your nearest location there and also there is a link out from there to a list if you can't work the map. And that will be updated won't it as more and more Warm Hubs come on board I guess? Yes that gets updated once a week from then on. That sounds like a great initiative Ben I hope that lots of people can go and get warm – yeah hopefully – we can offer support to residents across the winter.
Unfortunately there will always be people who are willing to take advantage of others in times of crisis. Linda Crowley from Trading Standards gives us a low down on the latest scams out there.
Linda Crowley Buckinghamshire and Surrey Trading Standards.
Over 40 million people have been targeted by scammers during the cost of living crisis so far. Scammers are very inventive and probably one of the most common ones at the moment are people pretending to be OFgem or just sending links to say that they can access the fuel discount scheme. But you will get that automatically discounted off your bill so need for a phone call ? Exactly. If you get any phone calls any text saying click on the links don't do it – right. And the same with any scams really in the sense that if you are unsure in anyway check with the you know the original source via the normal channels and contact them to verify whether it is correct or not yet. There's a rise also in goods which they are claiming have - can reduce the cost of your bill, so "plug and go devices" things that will save you 50% off your energy bill you know wild claims that we're doing some checks on some subjects now but we are extremely unlikely to be accurate. So it's best to be very sceptical really about along these claims. And are they selling these devices mainly online? Yes. Yes and indeed the Electrical Safety Council have done some tests on some of them and a lot of them are unsafe as well as the claims being inaccurate. So they can start a fire in your house and they won't reduce your bills so be wary about any devices like that.
Another concern that the National Trading Standards illegal money lending team are concerned that they will see a rise in Loan-Sharks offering money at extremely high interest rates as obviously everybody's belt tightens rising in goods and prices. So you know with regards to that don't - I would suggest be very sceptical about people that might loan you money because you don't know whether A: It's illegally being lent to you via a Loan Shark because that can be a very long road to pay that off. And again what are the checks really in terms of who is reputable for loans ? Anyone that's giving you a loan should be licensed under the Consumer Credit Act to do it. And paperwork and all those sorts of things are in a set format and so anybody that is offering you money without any paperwork without any sort of terms being written up. Yeah. It is a worry potentially because they could be a Loan Shark. And as we know the prices that they charge for paying back the loan are ridiculous and can blight peoples lives for years. If you need a loan go to known approved people like for example Christians Against Poverty who can help with things like that. So yes that's some of the concerns.
It sorts of things it can affect for example we've also seen a rise within the Trading Standards Institute of counterfeit goods. People again want to buy things that are cheaper and yeah and the danger with that is again that they may not be as safe as goods which are made by the brand holder. There will something won't there before Christmas you know because people will start trying to buy Christmas presents but do it on the cheap and it's not not always beneficial is it ?No that's right you don't wanna get unsafe goods. We've seen rises in illicit tobacco. Seen rises in false and misleading prices and rises in food fraud as well. What's food fraud? So it can be it something that's a counterfeit product so for example we've seen rises in vodka which is either counterfeit claiming to be something else or is just cheaper than you would expect. Some counterfeit vodka for example is pretending to be a specific brand but also they are also cheap vodkas on the market which contain excesses of certain materials which can actually cause blindness. Oh wow. So beware of anything that you know if it's too good to be true treat it with extreme caution. Illicit tobacco so that's either tobacco which shouldn't come into this country because this is not supported in this country, there is no legal market for it all counterfeit or cigarettes which are smuggled in in order to avoid the duty. Yeah. We're seeing lots of places where they are being hidden very discreetly behind counters and our sniffer dogs have found where they've hidden them.
If you look on the Surrey County Council website but also the Citizens Advice consumer helpline has a telephone number where you can contact and report your concerns if you think that someone is being scammed and if you have concerns for somebody in your neighbourhood the phone number is 0808 223 113. So how do people report a scam text. If you get a suspicious e-mail you can report it to the suspicious e-mail reporting service by forwarding it to report@phishing.gov.uk. If you have any suspicious texts you can forward them to 7726 . OK. If you need advice or further support from Trading Standards then you can report it to the Citizens Advice consumer helpline on 0808 223 113 and all these numbers for reporting scams are they on the Buckinghamshire and Surrey Trading Standards website Trading Standards - Surrey County Council (surreycc.gov.uk) . Yes always a pleasure Linda – Yes and you CJ take care.
All the information covered here today can be found at on our health and welfare hub surreycc.gov.uk/welfare or call the Community Helpline on 0300 200 1008. Keep warm everyone.
You can get in touch with us with a question or if you have an idea of what you'd like to hear about in future episodes you can e-mail us at surreymatters@surreycc.gov.uk you can also subscribe to the show on your podcast player of choice if you'd like to sign up to our e-newsletter which goes out every month at surreycc.gov.uk/SurreyMatters. This show was hosted by myself Catherine Jevans the music and production by Richard Neal. Surrey Matters is a production of the Surrey County Council communications and engagement team.