Prof Hills report to highlight growing fuel poverty

Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change has commissioned a special report concerning fuel poverty from Professor John Hills, Centre for the Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics s. It is due to be published this month although no specific date has been announced.

The interim report by Professor Hills published in October 2011 found that 10% of winter deaths in England and Wales was caused by fuel poverty, – that is 2,700 people!

According to the National Home Improvement Council Fuel (NHIC) poverty is defined as when a household needs to spend 10% or more of its income on maintaining an acceptable level of heating throughout the whole property. Severe fuel poverty is spending 15% of income to achieve the same level.

Lord Ezra, a past President of the NHIC, is shortly to further raise the issue oif fuel poverty in the House of Lords.

In England and Wales, according to the latest official figures released by government (DECC), there are 3,964,000 households in fuel poverty, over half of which (1,720,000) contain someone aged 60 or over as the oldest person in the household.

Hills’ interim report on fuel poverty calculates from the DECC figures that there are likely to be 4.1 million households (of all ages) in England and Wales in fuel poverty in 2011, but, given recent energy price rises, this seems on the low side.

According to the Scottish House Conditions Survey 2009 (the latest date for which figures are available) about 770,000 homes were said to be in fuel poverty. This compared with 618,000 in 2008 and 293,000 in 2003. The survey also indicated that the number of Scottish households in ‘extreme fuel poverty’ had risen from 3% in 2002 to 10% in 2009.

Official figures have shown that the proportion of households living in Scotland is nearly twice as much as that of England. Almost a third of Scottish households (32.7%) spend 10% of income on fuel compared with 18.4% in England and Wales.

The 2006 House Conditions Survey from the Northern Ireland Executive quoted that in 2006, a third of all households in Northern Ireland – equivalent to some 230,000 households, were in fuel poverty’ This was higher than in either 2001 and 2004 in both of which around a quarter of all households were in fuel poverty.

More information: andrew@nhic.org.uk