Archived press release

Warm homes strategy still falls short

21 November 2001

WARM WORDS - COLD HOMES:

Friends of the Earth today expressed disappointment at the Government's fuel poverty strategy, launched today.

The strategy is required by the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000, drafted by FOE and introduced to Parliament by David Amess MP (Con: Southend West). It was intended to end Britain's scandalous record of regularly having one of the highest rate of excess winter deaths in Europe, because of a combination of low incomes and badly insulated homes. The elderly and very young children are particularly at risk.

The strategy fails to meet the terms of the Act, breaks Labour's own policy pledges and would fail to assist over 1 million households because of its controversial definition of fuel poverty.

Despite a consultation process in hundreds of individuals and organisations pointed out problems with the Government's draft proposals, the final strategy is still inadequate because it:-

• fails to deliver the policy agreed at Labour's conference in 2000 to eradicate fuel poverty by 2010.
• fails to "specify a target date for achieving the objective of ensuring that as far as reasonably practicable persons in England or Wales do not live in fuel poverty" as required by the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act (subsection 2(2)(b))
• uses a controversial definition of fuel poverty based on a household's gross income,rather than its disposable income _ i.e. that left after paying housing costs. This prevents at least 1 million households benefiting from the scheme.

Martyn Williams, FOE's senior parliamentary campaigner, commented

"The strategy doesn't live up to what Labour has promised. It doesn't even seem to do what's now required by law, which is to set a target for eradicating fuel poverty everywhere _ not just in vulnerable households. It looks like the Treasury has forced ministers to do the bare minimum they can get away with. But this will leave an awful lot of people still shivering in winter.”

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Published by Friends of the Earth Trust