Energy News

Government ‘will miss energy poverty targets’

Wednesday, 31 March 2010

By Daniel Barnes- daniel@consumerchoices.co.uk

Gas and electricity price increases leave more Brits facing energy poverty, MPs have warned.

The government will miss fuel poverty targets, a leading group of MPs has claimed.

The current target is for fuel poverty to be stamped out by 2016. You are considered to be in fuel poverty if you spend over 10% of their income on heating bills.

A report by the Energy and Climate Change Committee claims the 2016 target now looks “difficult to hit” and the 2010 target of ending fuel poverty for vulnerable households will be missed.

It states: “Despite measures to increase energy efficiency and incomes, hefty rises in fuel prices in recent years have overwhelmed the positive steps taken by the government and resulted in large increases in the numbers of households in fuel poverty.”

But it’s difficult to know which households are in fuel poverty. Paddy Tipping MP, acting chair of the committee, said: “Because it does not have that information, [the government] has to use age and receipt of benefits as proxies for fuel poverty, and that means that some people who are fuel poor do not get help, while others who are not in fuel poverty receive assistance.”

The MPs on the committee claim the best way to end fuel poverty is to increase energy efficiency in homes, and they are pushing for the Warm Front scheme, which offers free and cut price insulation packages, to have more focus.

They are also pushing the government to see how people with cancer and other serious medical conditions could benefit from social price support.

The MPs also hit out at the Winter Fuel Payments claiming they are “unfocused and not targeted on people in or near fuel poverty.

“It would be more intellectually honest to rename the benefit; concede that it a general income supplement; and stop accounting for it as a fuel poverty measure.”