Fuel poverty means being unable to afford to keep warm. We consider a household to be in fuel poverty if it needs to spend more than 10 percent of its income on fuel for adequate heating (usually 21 degrees for the main living area, and 18 degrees for other occupied rooms).
Living in cold homes can damage people’s health and affect their quality of life. The elderly, children, and those with a disability or long-term illness are especially vulnerable.
There are three main causes of fuel poverty:
- poor energy efficiency in the home
- high energy prices
- low household income
21 October 2009
The Fuel Poverty review: Terms of Reference for the next phase
The initial findings of the fuel poverty review were included in the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan. At the centre of the initial findings was the announcement that legislation would be brought forward at the earliest opportunity with the aim of placing social price support on a statutory footing, when the voluntary agreement comes to an end in March 2011.
Implementing mandated social price support represents a major programme of work, requiring new primary legislation, new secondary legislation and stakeholder engagement throughout. A consultation is expected on the detailed arrangements of the scheme in the summer of 2010. Therefore, going forward, a significant part of the fuel poverty review team’s work is expected to focus on the detailed implementation of this policy.
Alongside the work on social price support, the review team will continue to build and strengthen the evidence base on fuel poverty and will work closely with colleagues across Departments, particularly on programmes delivering household energy efficiency and heating measures (such as the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target (CERT) and the post-2012 delivery arrangements), to explore better ways of targeting help at the most vulnerable fuel poor households.
It is expected that there will continue to be meetings with interested stakeholders to listen to their views on existing and proposed activity to help inform the ongoing work on fuel poverty and help strengthen the evidence base.