A CHARTER drawn up by a UK-wide coalition wants to eradicate what it calls the “scandal” of fuel poverty.
A charter drawn up by anti-poverty, energy, environmental and health groups is calling on the government and political parties to commit to making all “fuel poor” homes as energy-efficient as a new build home.
The campaigners warn the government that it will fail to meet its target to end fuel poverty by 2016 under its current strategy, saying numbers could increase to a record high.
The coalition, including Age Concern and Help the Aged, the Centre for Sustainable Energy, Child Poverty Action Group and Consumer Focus, said many of the estimated 6.6 million UK households struggling to afford to heat and power their homes were risking their health by cutting back on heating or other essentials.
Consumer Focus energy spokesman Jonathan Stearn said: “It should be a right, not a privilege, for everybody to have a warm, dry home that they can afford to heat.
“The main political parties have all exchanged rhetoric on the importance of ending fuel poverty but what we need now is concerted action. Any political party serious about ending the hardship millions of fuel poor households are facing must commit to make fuel poor homes as energy efficient as those built today.”
The coalition said it was worried about the “confusing and uncoordinated” range of energy efficiency schemes and a lack of measurable targets. It said many more vulnerable people would be pushed in to fuel poverty unless an improved national energy efficiency scheme was introduced.
A commitment to making homes as energy efficient as a house built today could reduce energy bills by up to 70 per cent and cut carbon emissions by as much as 59 per cent, the group said.
The move is being backed by a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which said current initiatives to deal with the problem were “out of date”, despite pledges to eradicate the issue by 2016.
Describing the government’s Home Energy Management Strategy as limited in its approach, the IPPR called for the establishment of an independent fuel poverty commission as the first step to a complete review of the initiative.
PPR co-director Carey Oppenheim said: “Extremely cold weather conditions seen in the UK over the past months have highlighted the pressing need for a radical overhaul of fuel poverty measures and policy. Millions of households across the UK still struggle to afford adequate warmth and the fuel poverty strategy devised in 2001 is increasingly out of step with reality in 2010.
“We need a creative and inclusive approach to reach a solution which breaks the cycle of short term payments and measures. In particular we need to focus on making UK homes more green and more fuel efficient so that it is more affordable to heat homes.”
Community-scale heating and micro-generation technologies are also effective methods outlined in the report, which has been increasing in the last five years.
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