Category: Reports

First triennial review report

The Governement has today published First triennial review report: Fuel Poverty Advisory Group for England

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition welcomes the government’s recognition that improving homes to high energy standards is central to ending fuel poverty in the long term. But its strategy is riddled with escape clauses. The government says it will only improve homes ‘where reasonably practicable’. It was these words that rendered the last fuel poverty target virtually meaningless. The target must be met for all low income households with exemptions only given in exceptional circumstances. And it must meet the target by 2025, not 2030 as the government proposes. Without these guarantees the proposed target leaves too much wriggle room for the government.

Please also find further responses from members of the coalition below (please click on links below):

AGE UK Report: Reducing Fuel Poverty – A Scourge for Older People

EFPC supporter Age UK has this week published a new report which calls on the Government to urgently tackle the nation’s problem of fuel poverty by driving forward a massive energy efficiency programme. The report argues that the only long term solution to ending the fuel poverty crisis is to make people’s homes as energy efficient as possible so that households can keep adequately warm at an affordable cost.

Age UK is calling for the Government’s anticipated fuel poverty strategy to include:

  • Targets to make all homes ‘fuel poverty proof’ – improving homes to a modern standard of energy efficiency, making them affordable to keep adequately warm
  • Whole-house improvements – not just offering the single most energy efficient measure but doing more if this is needed to make a house affordable to heat
  • Area-based, locally driven programmes – these are more cost effective to deliver than ‘scatter-gun approaches’
  • Serious involvement from the NHS, recognising fuel poverty as a driver of ill health
  • Steps to tackle fuel poverty in rural areas as well as urban ones – fuel poverty is particularly prevalent in rural areas due to the high number of stone-built, solid wall properties and households who are off-mains gas.

Download the full report here

Annual Fuel Poverty Statistics Report

DECC has now published its Annual Fuel Poverty Statistics for 2014. The full statistical release can be found here.

Headline figures include:

  • More families are in “fuel poverty” than at any time for a decade;
  • The total number of all households in fuel poverty fell slightly in 2012, to 2.28 million – 10 per cent of all households – but is projected to have risen again by this year, to an estimated 2.33 million;
  • The so-called ‘fuel poverty gap’ – the amount of extra money a household would need in order to heat its home adequately and remain above the poverty line – is also estimated to have increased, from £443 in 2012 to £480 to 2014.