National Park shock figures

The Bevan Foundation has commented on latest figures from the 2011 Census of Population, reported in the Western Mail on 20th February 2013 which challenge some of the stereotypes about rural life. As well as revealing a low percentage of the population in the parks which work in agriculture, the Census also shows that many homes in Wales’s National Parks lack adequate heating.  While 98% of homes across Wales were centrally heated, 8.3% of households in Snowdonia lacked this basic feature of a modern house. More than one in 20 households (5.3%) on the Pembrokeshire Coast and 2.6% in the Brecon Beacons lacked central heating.

Victoria Winckler, Director of the Bevan Foundation, told the Western Mail “It’s long been recognised that rural areas have particular problems with fuel bills, mainly because they are off-grid. They don’t get gas at the turn of a tap so their options before they have done anything are much more expensive.”

Many people preferred to use electricity or coal as a heating source because they could easily control how much they spent on a day to day basis, she said. A large number of homes, she added, were “hard to heat” because they could not be easily insulated due to solid stone walls and roof design.

She said: “If you couple that with low incomes, you’ve got a toxic mix and a lot of cold people.”