Archived press release

Fuel poverty and energy inefficiency major killers

4 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.

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust