Response to the Senedd inquiry into fuel poverty in Wales

The Bevan Foundation has responded to a consultation from the Welsh Parliament’s Equality and Social Justice Committee

The Equality and Social Justice Committee holds the Welsh Government to account in areas including tackling poverty and equalities and human rights. The Committee has asked people for their views as it seeks to understand what fuel poverty means for people in Wales and the progress of the new Warm Homes Programme, the Welsh Government’s primary mechanism for addressing fuel poverty in Wales (also known as Nest).  

The Bevan Foundation has made the following points in our response:

• Fuel poverty is a persistent and urgent problem for large numbers of people in Wales.
• There is a need for an up-to-date survey of the heating efficiency performance of Wales’ housing stock to build an accurate picture of fuel poverty in Wales.
• Our concerns around the impact that recent changes to the Winter Fuel Payment will have on certain groups of pensioners who are in or at risk of hardship, including those who do not claim Pension Credit even though they are eligible and those whose incomes are marginally above the eligibility threshold.
• The need for an increase in both the scale of ambition and pace of delivery of the Welsh Government’s Warm Homes Programme (Nest). We are concerned that the new programme:
  • Does not have a sufficiently ambitious programme timescale. Its current target pace of works means that it would take over a century to fulfil its aim of helping all low-income Welsh households living in cold homes. More investment is needed for the programme to live up to its remit as the Welsh Government’s flagship mechanism to tackle fuel poverty;
  • Appears currently to be risking leaving people without heating or hot water due to an oversight when it comes to how eligible householders whose homes are not currently suitable for a low-carbon heating system (such as a heat pump) are treated. The Welsh Government must take steps to ensure it does not leave anyone who fulfils the definition of living in fuel poverty without essential heating as part of the programme.
• As well as making progress on improving the heating efficiency of Welsh housing stock, making significant inroads into tackling fuel poverty will also require collaborative action by the Welsh and UK governments to address its other causes, most notably low incomes and high energy prices. The work of the Warm Homes Programme will be undermined unless money is put back into people’s pockets by addressing injustices in social security, employment, and the energy sector.  

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