Monday, December 17, 2012

A cold Christmas - eating or heating

Some 300,000 more homes are likely to have been pushed into "fuel poverty" by Christmas amid soaring energy prices warned the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group. Estimates have already shown that over nine million households could be living in fuel poverty by 2016. Families are considered to be in fuel poverty when they have to spend more than 10% of their incomes on keeping their homes warm.

 Derek Lickorish, chairman of the FPAG, said: "With a cold winter, welfare reforms cutting incomes, and all at a time of austerity measures and other rising household costs, the plight of the fuel poor has never been more serious. Millions are living in misery due to high energy bills."

 Nearly half of the UK's fuel poor households are pensioners, a third contain people with some sort of disability or illness, a fifth contain a child aged five or under and one in 10 house someone aged 75 or over. Six million households plan to cut back on their heating this winter due to fears about costs.

A government scheme to improve the energy efficiency of homes could take 30 years to succeed and add to energy prices in the meantime.

2 comments:

Peirce Phelps Heating said...

The figures are just mind boggling. 9 million household by 2016?

I hope, congress passes a bill for people to enjoy some grants for installing geothermal or solar panels in their houses. For the future depends on renewable energy.

Rodriguez said...

Its too much 6 million people gonna cut their heating coz of cost this number is really too much, gov should think about this and provide some better options.