Fuel Poverty – England

Posted on March 16, 2012 by townsend

• Fuel poverty to rise to 8.5m, report warns, By Damian Kahya, March 15, 2012, BBC News: “Fuel poverty in England is likely to worsen, despite measures to try to eradicate it, a government-commissioned report has warned. Some 7.8 million people could not afford their energy bills in 2009, its author, Prof John Hills said. This is due to rise to 8.5 million by 2016. Campaigners have called for more money to be invested in cutting bills. The government has said it is committed to tackling the problem which has been linked to 2,700 deaths a year…”
• Nine million will live in ‘fuel poverty’ in the next four years, By Simon Read, March 16, 2012, The Independent: “Almost nine million people will live in fuel poverty in the next four years despite ministerial pledges to eradicate it by 2016, a Government-commissioned report has warned. The author of the report, Professor John Hills, warned that official plans to fight fuel poverty are failing. ‘The Government should set out a renewed and ambitious strategy for tackling fuel poverty,’ he said. The existing definition of a household in fuel poverty is one which spends more than 10 per cent of its income on energy. But Professor Hills, director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics, says the definition is misleading as it excludes some people whose incomes are so low they are reduced to spending only minuscule amounts of money on fuel. Proportionally they are not considered in fuel poverty…”