Fuel Poverty is about how people cope with cold weather

Last week, Gareth Price introduced a report showing the effects of fuel poverty on children. The report highlighted a growing problem in wales, and an issue that – despite the best efforts of the assembly – remains a serious issue for families in poverty. Our own contribution to the debate is now available for you all to read here.

Our own research examined the coping strategies of people when it came to cold weather.  What we found was that people adopted a range of strategies to deal with cold weather, at the one end people would simply turn the heating up and find ways of paying the bills – perhaps going into debt to do so. On the other end of the spectrum, we found that people would stay cold, even disconnecting themselves,  as they felt they would not be able to pay bills. This would then expose them to the effects of cold weather, the danger of which was illustrated by Professor John Ashton:

“What’s happening in a lot of these houses is that you’ll have an elderly person, perhaps a widow on their own on a low pension, struggling to keep the house warm,

“She’ll keep one room warm and then at bedtime she’ll go up to her bedroom which is cold. She’ll get chilled, and then she’ll get a chest infection, go on to get pneumonia and that’s it.”

This finding questions the effectiveness of relying on energy efficiency measures alone to help people in fuel poverty. Energy efficiency measures help those who over-consume energy, as it brings down the cost of staying warm. They are less effective at persuading people to stay warm. For example: a house costs £1500 a year to keep warm. Following the installation of insulation technology, that cost is brought down to £1000. The person living in that house still has to find £1000, and if they deal with fuel poverty through staying cold, it is likely they will remain doing so.

These findings were presented at our launch event yesterday, and following on from this we had a panel discussion involving Nuria Zolle (NEA), Peter Kocen (energy UK), Roy Roberts (chair of the fuel poverty advisory group) and Mark Isherwood AM.  This discussion focused on issues such as whether targets were useful, the role of smart meters, pricing transparency and the need for a people centred approach to fuel poverty. We also discussed on where to take the discussion from here, and therefore I invite readers to browse our report and then comment on its findings below (press the add a comment button on your screen)