Thousands of homes in Brighton and Hove have been given an energy-efficiency upgrade since the start of a government scheme to fight fuel poverty, according to official figures.
The upgrades were made as part of the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) which brought in by the coalition government in 2013 to tackle fuel poverty and help reduce carbon emissions.
The scheme requires some energy suppliers to help poorer and more vulnerable customers to heat their homes, including installing insulation or upgrading a heating system.
The fuel poverty charity National Energy Action said that the scheme and others like it “have made a huge positive difference to vulnerable people”.
But the charity warned that increases in energy prices “mean a warm home remains unaffordable for millions of households”.
Last week, the regulator Ofgem increased the energy price cap by 2 per cent, taking the average energy bill for gas and electricity, for those paying by direct debit, to £1,755 a year, up from £1,720.
The most recent figures from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said that, in Brighton and Hove, the scheme had funded 7,455 upgrades since the scheme started in 2013.
It means that almost 6 in every 100 homes has had some kind of upgrade such as new boilers, solar panels, underfloor insulation or roof or wall insulation.
Almost 4.3 million projects across Great Britain have been completed, the equivalent of just over 15 for every 100 homes.
National Energy Action’s director of policy and advocacy Peter Smith said: “When delivered well, energy saving schemes like the ECO have made a huge positive difference to vulnerable people, helping to keep homes warmer for less money.
“Despite this, recent increases in energy bills mean a warm home remains unaffordable for millions of households.
“The UK government is also on course to miss their legal obligation to bring all fuel poor households up to a reasonable standard of energy efficiency by the end of this decade.”
The increase in household energy costs comes even though wholesale prices fell 2 per cent in the three months before Ofgem’s latest price cap decision.
Standing charges – the sum consumers pay per day to have energy supplied to their homes – are due to rise.
They are rising by 4 per cent for electricity and 14 per cent for gas, or 7p a day, mainly driven by the government’s expansion of the Warm Home Discount.
Some 2.7 million more low-income households are eligible for the £150 Warm Home Discount this winter, after the government said that it would remove the “hard to heat” eligibility criteria.
Mr Smith said: “The UK Government’s Warm Homes Plan provides the biggest opportunity in decades for millions of fuel poor households to live in warm, healthy homes.
“Although significant, the investment that has already been allocated needs to be prioritised to meet legal fuel poverty targets and provide the greatest assistance to fuel poor households who live in the leakiest homes.
“It should be seen as a crucial plank of a plan to reduce the impacts of a cost of living that has become difficult to meet for millions.”
Fuel Poverty Action spokesperson Jonathan Bean said: “Unaffordable energy is forcing millions of us to ration our heating and suffer in cold homes in winter. This is especially dangerous for older and disabled people.
“Government home retrofit schemes can help bring bills down, but people should check that the company they chose is listed by their local authority and that work is done properly.”
The Minister for Energy Consumers Martin McCluskey said: “We are taking urgent action to support vulnerable families this winter.
“(We are) expanding the £150 Warm Home Discount to more than six million families which helps one in five households with their energy bills.
“In the coming weeks, we will be announcing details of the biggest home upgrade programme in British history to improve up to five million homes, making them cheaper and cleaner to run.
“Wholesale gas costs remain 75 per cent above their levels before Russia invaded Ukraine. The more renewables on the system, the cheaper the wholesale price of electricity.
“(This) is why the only answer for Britain is this government’s mission to get us off the rollercoaster of fossil fuel prices and on to clean, homegrown power we control.”
But about 16,000 people in the city living in fuel poverty, so the government are not moving quickly enough. Such a scandal that so many people live in poor quality homes that are so hard to heat and that fuel poverty remains so prevalent in one of the richest countries in the world.
The farcical removal of winter fuel allowance was also a crazy thing for the government to do in the way they did and exacerbated hardship and fuel poverty for many. Yes, some pensioners don’t need the payments, but the way they removed it impacted on many households on the brink last year, and it was such a bodged job.
Fuel poverty is when a household needs to spend at least 10% of its income on heating. The easiest way to reduce fuel poverty is to reduce the price of fuel. That means reducing electricity and gas prices. Since we have the highest prices in the developed world for these, that shouldn’t be difficult. Unfortunately prices are going up and not down.
Labour are saving money everywhere. Well done. We can all look forward to a warm Xmas with more money too