Home > Press releases > 1998
04 May 1998
Health, Housing, Green and Poverty Groups Join in Call for Government Action
Twenty-six leading health, housing, environmental, childcare
and poverty organisations, trade unions and academics have joined in
a call for urgent Government action on fuel poverty and energy efficiency.
The call comes in a joint response to the Government's Green Paper “Our
Healthier Nation”. The response states that the Green Paper's
claim that “about a million homes in the UK have inadequate
standards of energy efficiency” is a “gross underestimate”.
According to the joint response:
“In total, there are 7.5 million households in England whose
fuel spending is not adequate to achieve minimum health-based heating
standards...The effects of fuel poverty are felt most by the vulnerable
-especially the elderly, children and the poor ... At average winter
temperatures, two thirds (66%) of people who get more than three
quarters (75%) of their income from state benefits fail to meet the
minimum health-based heating standard... As a result poor housing is
a major factor in causing and exacerbating health inequalities.
Poor energy efficiency levels are the root cause of this fuel poverty.
The results are chronic ill health.There are between 30,000 and 50,000
extra winter deaths in Britain each year - mainly from heart and respiratory
conditions made worse by cold living conditions. These problems are
not experienced in countries with a colder climate but a better quality
housing stock with higher levels of energy efficiency,such as Sweden.
Fuel poverty is not just ruining people's health and quality of life,
it is also imposing a heavy burden on an over-stretched National Health
Service, at an estimated cost of £1 billion a year...
We recommend that fuel poverty could be addressed in “Our Healthier
Nation” by the creation of a fourth“setting for action”
... The Healthy Homes Setting could include targets to increase energy
efficiency,focused on household groups in most need ... The Government's
first responsibility is to acknowledge the scale of the problem, and
its second it to put in place a co-ordinated framework which sets the
appropriate financial and regulatory systems to stimulate and facilitate
action.”
The Joint Statement on Housing has been signed by Age
Concern, the Association for the Conservation of Energy, the Association
for Public Health, Barnardos, Dr Brenda Boardman (Fellow in Energy
Efficiency, Oxford University), the British Medical Association Public
Health Committee, Care and Repair England, the Chartered Institute of
Environmental Health, the Chartered Institute of Housing, Child Poverty
Action Group, Church Action on Poverty, Community Health UK, Friends of
the Earth, Health and Housing, Health for all Network (UK), Help the Aged,
Liverpool Healthy Cities, London Homelessness Forum, King's Fund, National
Energy Action, National Right to Fuel Campaign, National Housing Federation,
New Economics Foundation, Public Health Alliance, SERA, UNISON.
Contact details:
Friends of the Earth
26-28 Underwood St.
LONDON
N1 7JQ
Tel: 020 7490 1555
Fax: 020 7490 0881
Web: www.foe.co.uk/feedback.html
Media team
