Cold Times: sign our letter to Chris Huhne
15 February 2011

Stopping our homes leaking heat is one of the cheapest and quickest ways to slash climate-changing carbon emissions.

It is also essential to protect the health of millions of vulnerable people - cold homes make people ill.

This winter, hundreds of our supporters have written moving letters to their MPs about their experiences of living in a cold home or freezing flat.

Our Executive Director Andy Atkins is writing to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Chris Huhne to send him some of the most powerful stories.

Andy thinks the Government's proposed solutions are weak and uncertain - and must include a law to ensure rented homes have to meet a basic standard of insulation.

Please co-sign it today and we'll deliver it to Chris Huhne.

Sign Andy's letter today

Dear Secretary of State,

Over the past month Friends of the Earth has asked our supporters to contact their MPs to tell them about their experience of living in a cold home and to ask their MP to sign Early Day Motion 653 (minimum energy efficiency standards for private rented homes). Hundreds have responded. They have written about the impact of living in a cold home on them and their families, and many tell of landlords who refuse to take action to insulate their properties. Some are from landlords themselves who think greater action is needed. We would like you to take the time to look at these moving testimonies for yourself. The Energy Bill currently going through the House of Lords contains measures to set up the Green Deal. Some landlords might take advantage of this to improve their properties but your own department's Impact Assessment thinks that many more will not respond. It is vital that the worst insulated properties are improved - we can't leave it to chance. No one should live in a home that is so cold it risks making them ill and pushes them into fuel poverty. Existing proposals to deal with landlords who fail to act are too weak and are unlikely to ever come into force. We are asking you to make the changes necessary to the Energy Bill to ensure it really works to protect the tenants and their families who have written to their MPs. Please listen to them and include legislation so that private rented properties must meet a basic standard of energy efficiency from 2016 and ensure that action in the sector is not blocked by endless reviews and conditions. Please also ask the Chancellor to ensure in the budget that landlords are given greater financial help to make the worst insulated properties warmer and cheaper to heat. Yours sincerely, Andy Atkins

You can contact me by email (preferably - to save resources) or at the following address:

Required data

Title

Please choose a title

First name

Surname

Postcode

Find Address

House Name / No.

Street

Town / City

Country

Please enter your country

Please tick this box if you would like Friends of the Earth to use the contact details you have supplied, including your email address, to keep you up to date on our work and what you are helping us to achieve.

Friends of the Earth is a collective name for Friends of the Earth Trust, registered charity 281681, company number 1533942, and Friends of the Earth Limited, company number 1012357, both of which may use the above information. In both cases the registered office is at 26-28 Underwood Street, London, N1 7JQ.

Cold Times: sign our letter to Chris Huhne15 February 2011

Sign Andy's letter today

Latest news

Get involved

Related links

Cold Times: sign our letter to Chris Huhne
15 February 2011