Press Story

As fuel bills start arriving at people's homes covering the coldest winter in living memory, The Long Cold Winter: Beating Fuel Poverty, published today (Monday 15 March 2010) highlights that the Government's current fuel poverty strategy - which had some success in reducing fuel poverty in its early years - is now out of date. The report argues for a radical new approach, to include the launch of a wide-ranging review of the Government's fuel poverty strategy and the setting up of an independent fuel poverty commission. While the Government's Home Energy Management Strategy, published last week, goes some way to improving the energy efficiency of homes, it does not go far enough or give great enough consideration to the issue of fuel poverty.

The report highlights that despite government targets to eradicate fuel poverty by 2016, the problem has been increasing in the last five years. It argues that short term measures are needed to help the poorest pay for their heating during the cold snap, but says a radical longer term strategy is needed - focusing on fuel efficiency

Key points from the report include:

Focus on energy efficiency measures (rather than helping people with paying their bills) as it is a more sustainable and cost effective way of tackling fuel poverty in the long run
Maximise the use of technological innovations such as smart meters, micro-generation technologies and community-scale heating
Ensure fuel poverty programmes are paid for in fair way. Making energy companies pay for schemes to help their poorest customers may seem attractive but it is not necessarily fair because people on lower incomes pay proportionately more towards the costs of these schemes
Government to match any extra money they are making the energy companies spend on fuel poverty programmes with additional funding for publicly-funded fuel poverty programmes.

ippr Co-Director Carey Oppenheim, said:

"Extremely cold weather conditions seen in the UK over the past months have highlighted the pressing need for a radical overhaul of fuel poverty measures and policy. Millions of households across the UK still struggle to afford adequate warmth and the fuel poverty strategy devised in 2001 is increasingly out of step with reality in 2010. We need a creative and inclusive approach to reach a solution which breaks the cycle of short term payments and measures. In particular we need to focus on making UK homes more green and more fuel efficient so that it is more affordable to heat homes."

Notes to Editors

1) ippr's report The Long Cold Winter: Beating fuel poverty by Jenny Bird, Ron Campbell and Kayte Lawton is published today (Monday 15 March 2010) and will be available to download at: www.ippr.org/publicationsandreports/

2) The Government's Energy Bill was introduced in the House of Commons on 19 November 2009 and received its Second Reading on 7 December 2009. It is now in Committee phase. The Bill contains proposals to introduce 'mandatory social price support', which would help to tackle fuel poverty by lowering the energy bills of more of the most vulnerable consumers and giving greater guidance on the types of households eligible for support. These measures will be funded by requiring energy companies to make available at least £300 million per annum by 2013-14 on social support.

3) There were an estimated 36,700 excess winter deaths in England and Wales in 2008/09 - an increase of 49 per cent compared with figures for 2007/08. The 2009/10 figures are very likely to be higher still.

4) The Department for Energy and Climate Change is running a review of its own on fuel poverty at the moment, but its focus is on making incremental changes to the existing strategy. ippr's research concludes a much bigger picture, radical and independent review chaired by a national figure is needed.

Contact:

Tim Finch, director of strategic communications, ippr, 020 7470 6106 / 07595 920 899 / t.finch@ippr.org

Monica Evans, interim press officer 020 7470 6112 / m.evans@ippr.org