Almost 3,000 people in England and Wales will die this coming winter because they cannot afford to heat their homes, a report suggests — more than the number killed in traffic accidents each year.
The Hills Fuel Poverty Review, which was commissioned by the government, found that if just 10 percent of UK winter deaths are caused by fuel poverty — a conservative estimate it claims — 2,700 people will perish as a direct result of being fuel poor.
The report also found that between 2004 and 2009 the “fuel poverty gap” — the extra amount those with badly insulated homes and poor heating systems would need to spend to keep warm — increased by 50 percent to ￡1.1 billion (US$1.73 billion) as a result of rising fuel prices.
By the end of this year, 4.1 million households in England are expected to be in fuel poverty. Households are considered fuel poor if they need to spend more than 10 percent of their income on fuel use to heat a home to an adequate standard of warmth, generally defined as 21?C in the living room and 18?C in other occupied rooms.
In October last year, the government announced it would commission an independent review of fuel poverty, investigating how to better define and measure it and tackle the underlying problems that lead to it.
The interim report from the review, written by John Hills, director of the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics, leaves the government in no doubt as to the depth of the fuel poverty problem engulfing many of the UK’s most vulnerable households.
The report, which backed the current definition of fuel poverty, found that living in cold homes has a series of effects on illness and mental health, but the most serious is its contribution to Britain’s unusually high rates of “excess winter deaths.”
Hills also found that while it is essential that the energy efficiency of the UK’s housing stock be improved, those on low incomes in the worst housing cannot afford to pay for it.
“The evidence shows how serious the problem of fuel poverty is, increasing health risks and hardship for millions of people and hampering urgent action to reduce energy waste and carbon emissions,” he said.
Derek Lickorish, chair of the government’s Fuel Poverty Advisory Group, welcomed the report, and said it should “set an alarm bell ringing very loudly for government, Ofgem [Office of the Gas and Electricity Markets], suppliers and society as a whole.”
“This disgrace is further compounded with the conclusion that households in or near the margins of poverty were faced with additional costs of some ￡1.1 billion at 2009 price levels to keep warm compared to more affluent households. That figure will be even more after the recent round of energy price increases,” he said.
“Urgent action must start today to mitigate the impact of high energy bills, including reviewing the way in which costs are recovered through energy bills to decarbonize our energy,” he said.
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