The research identified seven major barriers and possible solutions:  

• A lack of awareness and too much confusing information lead to poor awareness of appropriate schemes. 

• The lack of partnership working between the agencies providing the alleviation measures and agencies in contact with vulnerable groups needs to be addressed. This will assist in delivering a more effectively targeted and concise message. 

• A lack of trust, with possible solutions including home visits, client champions, referrals from other agencies already trusted by the client, visits to clubs and organisations that potential beneficiaries attend, recommendations from family members and letting people in an area know that other people have had work done by the scheme. 

• Confusion over eligibility, resulting in a need to clearly inform would-be beneficiaries of the eligibility criteria and to simplify processes as much as possible. This may also be enhanced through partnership working. 

• Eligibility is also problematic in that not all types of property and tenure are eligible for certain schemes. The most noticeable of these cases are those where the vulnerable customer is neither the owner nor the tenant or where a communal heating system is in operation. Extension of the types of alleviation measure and eligibility criteria will widen access. Also, working with landlords to promote schemes will help. 

• Frontline staff often state that people are too proud to accept free help; however, the assumption that pride acts as a barrier was not well supported by the evidence from the community.