Case Study: A decade supporting the energy needs of a leading care home business

We’ve recently marked 10 years of working with Signature Senior Lifestyle and helping them to keep their care home energy bills under control and cost-effective for the business.

We met them at the Bournemouth Care Show in 2010 and they set us a challenge to show them what we could do for their energy bills. They liked what we did and we have been supporting them ever since.

When we started with Signature Senior Lifestyle they had one established care home and had just bought their second. Today they have 16 including those under construction.

Our team has supported Signature Senior Lifestyle as they have grown from those early beginnings. Now we work with the development team on the new-build projects to get power and gas to the site and then to manage the supplies after the meters have been installed.

We also work closely with the Signature Senior Lifestyle accounts team on any billing issues they may have with their energy suppliers, and with the sales teams on the metering systems for their clients.

Care home energy needs

We get all of their homes on to one gas contract and one electricity contract - a single multi-site contract for all of their care home energy needs which helps to reduce the complexity and inefficiencies and allows them to add or remove should they open a new home or sell one on.

What else have we done?

  • We have negotiated volume tolerance contracts on their behalf to allow for the fact a new home can take up to 18 months to fill.
  • We have negotiated on their behalf with energy suppliers to keep the security deposits for the company at a low level for the term of the contract.
  • We have monitored changes in energy market pricing and made recommendations for early contract renewals where there could be a substantial financial benefit to them, saving the company 10s of thousands of pounds.

What can’t be measured is the time and the hassle that we have saved for Signature in managing this process for themselves.

Testimonial:

Neil Phillips from Signature Senior Lifestyle said:

"We are a fast growing care group with an ambitious building strategy. Total Energy Solutions has helped us every step of the way, handling all meter installations with our developers and arranging the connections and supply contracts. Their help doesn’t stop there, forecasting future energy costs has been invaluable and made our budgets realistic. Total Energy Solutions is our energy team managing all our contracts, dealing with any issues when they arise and always at the end of the phone when we need help.”