Fuel poverty target switched to efficiency goal

Ministers have introduced amendments to the Energy Bill currently going through parliament that would remove the legal commitment to end fuel poverty by 2016.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change said a report it commissioned from London School of Economics academic John Hills, Getting the measure of fuel poverty, recognised that fuel poverty is a ‘long-term, structural problem’ and that eradication is the ‘wrong type of target’.

‘Instead we have proposed a target that will focus on improving the energy efficiency of the homes of the fuel poor, providing for a more sensible measure of progress in tackling the problem,’ it said.

The Hills review, which was published last year, also looked at the definition of fuel poverty, and DECC has now announced how this will be judged in the future.

Rather than defining a fuel poor household as one that spends 10 per cent of its income on energy a year, the government will now only include households that are below the poverty line and have higher than normal energy costs.

The poverty line is defined as having an income below 60 per cent of median once energy costs are taken into account.

Energy secretary Edward Davey said: ‘The new definition, together with the amendment that we are making to the Energy Bill, will ensure a focus on the households that are at the heart of the fuel poverty problem. That’s those with both low incomes and high energy costs.’

Campaigners accused the government of attempting to hide the extent of fuel poverty by redefining the problem.

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