All low-income households living in inefficient homes should be included in the way fuel poverty is measured, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) has proposed.
In a consultation document released yesterday (22 July) BEIS suggested several new amendments to its 2015 fuel poverty strategy.
The document admits fuel poverty is a “significant challenge” and that although progress has been made, “more work remains”.
Under the new model a household would be classed as fuel poor if the property has an energy efficiency rating of Band D, E, F or G, meaning disposable income (after housing costs and energy needs) would be below the poverty line.
BEIS says the rationale is to reduce the “apparent churn in and out of fuel poverty” which is caused by the current metric so that as action is taken to improve homes to an energy efficiency rating of Band C the number of households in fuel poverty can reduce over time.
As well as broadening how fuel poverty is measured, the government also intends to refine the vulnerability principle by clarifying that it will consider the impact of its policies on the health and wellbeing of people on very low incomes, even when they live in a reasonably energy efficient home.
Further measures include a new sustainability principle which would ensure policies contributing to the fuel poverty target are complimentary to other government priorities such as the clean growth strategy and the industrial strategy.
The consultation document also gave an evaluation of the 2015 strategy which found the average energy efficiency rating for fuel poor households is much lower than the average energy efficiency rating for all households, as measured using the Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP).
It did however find that efficiency ratings for fuel poor households have improved more quickly than energy efficiency for all households across all tenure types. For example, between 2003 and 2017, the annual average increase in SAP rating for fuel poor social sector households was 1.3 times the average increase for all social housing households.
Writing in a foreward to the report, interim energy and clean growth minister Chris Skidmore said “steady progress is being made”, but much more needs to be done to meet the fuel poverty target and end the “blight of cold homes”.
“The best long-term solution to addressing fuel poverty is to improve household energy efficiency. That is why we have set the fuel poverty target for England, and committed in our manifesto, to improve the energy efficiency of as many fuel poor households as we can.
“Transforming the energy performance of homes will also make an important contribution to decarbonising homes on the path to net zero by 2050 and support thousands of jobs in clean growth as part of our industrial strategy”, he added.
In response to the proposals, a spokesperson for Energy UK said:“While we welcome measures to ensure that help is targeted at those most in need in future, we urgently need to step up efforts to make our homes energy efficient as the best way to cut bills for those in fuel poverty.
“At present, the rate of installations is falling and there is a huge shortfall in the investment needed to meet the existing fuel poverty strategy targets.
“As we have long called for – and the Commission for Customers in Vulnerable Circumstances recently reiterated – the government needs to make energy efficiency a National Infrastructure Priority and follow the example of Scotland and Wales by making centrally funded support available for households most in need.”