Welcome for Assembly Report on Fuel Poverty

The Bevan Foundation welcomes the National Assembly’s Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee’s recommendations to the Welsh Government for its new fuel poverty strategy.

The Bevan Foundation welcomes the report of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee of the National Assembly for Wales on fuel poverty.  The report extensively quotes the Bevan Foundation’s oral evidence given on 8th January, and its written evidence.

The report agrees with many of our recommendations on the steps that the Welsh Government should take when drafting its new fuel poverty strategy. Amongst these recommendations are:

• The Welsh Government should adopt a more appropriate definition of fuel poverty: one that more accurately reflects the lived experience of fuel poor households in Wales. As its starting point, it should consider the ‘residual income’ approach, learning lessons from England and Scotland
• The Welsh Government’s new fuel poverty strategy must comprehensively address the three determinants of fuel poverty – energy prices, household incomes and energy efficiency
• The Welsh Government’s new fuel poverty targets must be challenging but realistic. The overall targets must be accompanied by interim targets and clear milestones against which progress can be measured
• The Welsh Government must work with Nest and Arbed am Byth to develop a robust monitoring and evaluation framework, which includes measuring the impact of the schemes on fuel poverty.

All these recommendations and others were informed by our expert input into their deliberations and we hope that the Welsh Government takes them into account as it develops its new fuel poverty strategy.