10% of All Households Are In Fuel Poverty

Before any analysis on fuel poverty, we need to decide what we mean by it. Helpfully, Professor John Hills (LSE) has provided us with a revised definition of fuel poverty. A household is considered to be fuel poor where:

·         they have required fuel costs that are above the average, and

·         were they to spend that amount, they would be left with a residual income below the official poverty line.

Incredibly, using this definition would mean that 10% of all households in England are in fuel poverty (over 2 million households). But who are these households? They aren’t distributed evenly across the country, but reflect complex relationships between income, stock condition, household formation, climate and how far the gas network stretches. Read more on the NHF website.