Slight dip in social homes in fuel poverty

However, these regions showed at least some improvement in terms of fuel poverty when compared with the same period last year. At that point, the South West was the most fuel poor region in terms of its social housing stock, while the North East has become the worst-performing region this year.

North West improves the most 

The North West was the region that showed the biggest year-on-year improvement in the first quarter of 2025. In 2024, it had one of the worst rates of fuel poverty, at 11.14% of all social homes, but this year that figure dropped to 9.43%. No other region experienced a drop of more than half a percentage point over this period.

In Wales, 10.39% of homes were in fuel poverty, down from 10.8% in 2024. This is similar to the improvement in the South West and the West Midlands, where the figure dropped from 11.01% to 10.63%. The South East and East of England showed smaller improvements.
The former went from 8.12% in 2024 to 7.83%, while the latter recorded a fuel poverty figure of 6.60% in the past three months, down from 6.71% in 2024.

Despite the UK-wide improvement, the average proportion of homes failing to reach 18°C over a seven-day period increased in a number of regions.

Outside Scotland, the East Midlands experienced the biggest increase, with 8.93% of homes deemed to be fuel poor on an average day, up from 8.21% in the first three months of 2024.

There was a similar pattern in Greater London, with 6.92% of homes on average being in fuel poverty, compared with 6.29% in 2024. This means that the East of England replaces London as the region with the smallest proportion of fuel-poor social homes.

Finally, in Yorkshire and the Humber, 8.07% of homes were assessed to be fuel poor in the first three months of 2025, up from 7.51% last year.

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