Ravensdale Junior School in Derby, part of the Transform Multi-Academy Trust, encourages and supports its children to achieve their best and develop the skills necessary to be independent learners.

We had been supporting schools within the Transform Trust for a number of years, helping them to achieve the best energy prices, validating bills, and managing any queries through to resolution directly with suppliers. The Trust made the decision to align the rest of its sites, including Ravensdale Junior School, under Zenergi in April 2020.

Challenge

Since the deregulation of the water market in 2017, we have also helped the Trust achieve a better price for its schools’ water under our water scheme.

Zenergi’s water scheme allows customers to access savings of as much as 5% compared to the ‘deemed rate’ that would be offered without engaging in the market and switching supplier. In addition to the savings, our scheme also offers excellent customer service and bill validation, helping to identify any unusual water consumption and ensuring that customers are not paying more for their water than they should.

The service also benchmarks customers’ consumption to evaluate whether sites are consuming water at a level above what would be expected, potentially identifying a leak or any overuse that should be investigated.

Solution

In October 2020, Ravensdale Junior School’s water invoice was significantly higher than usual at £14,000 and therefore flagged for investigation under Zenergi’s checking and confirmation service. Unfortunately, an adjoining school that shares the same site although it is not part of Transform Trust, had suffered an arson attack that had taken more than a day and a half to extinguish. The fire brigade had needed to use Ravensdale Junior School’s water supply to put it out, causing the significant bill.

Results

We worked with the investigation team to resolve the issue, ultimately managing to have the entire £14,000 bill written off.