ROOF Blog

The government has been warned that its plans to cut fuel poverty and improve energy efficiency were underfunded, untargeted and underprepared in a report from Consumer Focus. The group says the government needs to spend £3 billion a year for seven years to meet its target of ending fuel poverty in 2016, and faced a total bill of £200 billion to improve energy efficiency. The report warns that if consumers bear the brunt of funding through increased energy bills, 1.7 million more households could be plunged into fuel poverty.

Gas and electricity regulator Ofgem announced a package of new rules for energy suppliers yesterday that will give consumers more power and crack down on unfair practices. The proposals include stopping the overcharging of some customers, and a restriction on doorstop selling.

Meanwhile, a cross-party bid to end fuel poverty by promoting energy efficiency and social tariffs for the less well off has failed in the Commons. Despite backing from a range of organisations including Help the Aged and Friends of the Earth and with cross party support, debate on the Fuel Poverty Bill ran out of time. Energy minister Joan Ruddock said the government already had a policy to tackle fuel poverty and criticised the ‘absolutist’ nature of the Bill which placed a duty of ministers irrespective of cost.

Rates of fuel poverty, defined as households which spend more than 10 per cent of their income in keeping warm, is twice as high in rural areas compared with urban areas, figures from the government has found. One in five families in rural areas were struggling to keep warm. On hearing the response to their parliamentary question the Liberal Democrats brought forward a parliamentary bill aimed at ending fuel poverty

Up to seven million homes in the UK will be offered a complete eco-makeover in a scheme to cut a third of greenhouse gas emissions from households by 2020 and slash fuel bills. Householders would also be encouraged to install small-scale renewable and low-carbon hearing systems such as solar panels and wood-burning boilers. Critics say that the targets will only be met if the insulation was good enough, the financial incentives big enough, and if people on low incomes had the work paid for to tackle fuel poverty. An announcement is expected in the next couple of days.

A quarter of families in the UK have cut back on their heating because they are worried about the bills. A further 45 per cent of low-income families can only afford to heat their homes partially, a survey by Save the Children has found. Help the Aged has similarly found that more than a third of older people say they will sometimes live in just one heated room of their home to save costs, while half of those surveyed said they would be forced to turn down their heating if they were unable to pay their bills.

The National Audit Office revealed that more than half of Britain’s poorest households are living in fuel poverty, unable to qualify for government grants for new heating systems and insulation. The NAO said action was needed to improve the eligibility criteria for the £852 million scheme to ensure that most vulnerable receive help first.

But the tough new targets tackling climate change will cost British households up to £500 a year more in utility bills, or a rise of 25 per cent for the average family, pushing as many as 1.7 million people into fuel poverty. The report also priced the move to a ‘low carbon economy’ at 1 per cent of national GDP, or the equivalent of £500 a year per household by 2020. Sceptics have dismissed the targets as ‘wishful thinking’, as the UK has only managed to reduce carbon emissions by just 3.6 per cent since 1990, and there is doubt over other countries following the British lead.