On 6th March, FPA will join Unite Community, the National Pensioners Convention (NPC) and many more to Unite 4 Energy For All and protest the number of people suffering due to cold and damp homes.
On March 6th, the government will announce its Spring Budget, which will likely be the last budget before a general election. Throughout austerity, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ‘cost of living’ crisis, government’s policies have actively contributed to hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths. Join us to demand an end to deaths fuelled by poverty.
Events are being planned in:
Barnsley – Meet 12.00 at Tower Centre Precinct near Coffee Boy.
Birmingham – Meet 12.00 New Street Station.
Bristol – Meet 11.30 at Tony Benn House, Victoria St, BS1 6AY.
Exeter – Meet 13.00 at Exeter Central Train Station.
Glasgow (8th March) – Meet 12.00 at The Platform Cafe, Easterhouse.
Between Thursday 19th – Sunday 22nd January, campaigners and locals came together in towns and cities across the UK to demand the UK Government #BanForcedPPMs and implement #EnergyForAll.
On the 19th, ONS released the excess winter deaths figures for 2021/22. We joined the National Pensioner’s Convention and others, holding our traditional vigil in Westminster to mark the date. Speeches were given by Lord Prem Sikka, John McDonnell MP, Jan Shortt (NPC General Secretary), Paula Peters (DPAC) and our own Ruth London. Following a minute’s silence, participants marched to Downing Street and laid a coffin at the gate.
On the same date, a similar vigil took place at Cardiff Central Square. Protesters also interrupted First Minister’s Questions in Edinburgh, challenging Nicola Sturgeon on prepayment meters.
Further demonstrations took place at Leicester Town Hall, a Shell garage in Cambridge and outside Octopus Energy Sales Hub in Birmingham!
We have succeeded in forcing the government to act! During the days of action, a crackdown was announced on energy companies forcing people onto prepayment meters. While we celebrate this success and reflect on the power of our collective action, we will continue to push the government to go further and implement an outright ban!
On January 19th, the Office for National Statistics will announce the number of excess winter deaths last year. Fuel Poverty Action call on our partners and allies to join us taking action around this date.
Around January 19th, hold a minute’s silence in your local area to commemorate those who’ve lost their lives as a result of fuel poverty. Invite friends, family, colleagues or comrades to join you in a public place and contact us on [email protected] so we can connect you with others near you.
📍 In London join a ‘Funeral March’. Meet at George V Statue, Old Palace Yard, Westminster at 11.30am for speeches and a minute’s silence before moving to Downing St. Wear black and bring a white flower.
(Nearest accessible tube station Westminster, Jubilee Line. Buses 3, 11 or 253 to nearby.)
📍Cardiff – On 19th January, meet at 11am in Cardiff Central Square.
📍Brighton– On 20th January, meet at 10.30am at the Brighton War Memorial, Old Steine.
📍Leicester– On 21st January, meet 11am at Leicester Town Hall.
Bring placards saying – ‘Energy For All’, ‘Cold Homes Kill’, ‘End Winter Deaths’ and ‘BanForcedPPMs‘.
📱 TAKE ACTION DIGITALLY
Sign and share the 38 Degrees petition calling on energy companies to stop forcing customers onto prepayment meters!
Use our template text to phone (020 7219 8497) or email ([email protected]) Grant Shapps’ office demanding the government #BanForcedPPMs.
🔥 WARM-UPS
On January 21st, organise or participate in a Warm-Up protest. Warm-Ups were started by Fuel Poverty Action on the principle that if we can’t afford to heat our homes, we have the right to go to any public building and keep warm there. See this guide to organising one.
Warm-Ups so far expected in:
Edinburgh – Meet at 9.50am outside Canongate Kirk.
Exeter – Meet 12pm at the bottom of Grenadier Road, EX1 3QN.
Liverpool – Meet 11.30am at Pier Head by the Ferry Terminal.
North London – Meet 12pm at Cavendish Square Gardens, W1G.
South London – Meet 12pm The Venue, 5-7 Middle Street, Croydon.
As part of the Warm This Winter coalition’s National Day of Action, Fuel Poverty Action and allied groups conducted ‘Warm-Ups’ in towns and cities across the UK to demand Energy For All.
Over the weekend of December 3rd and 4th, Warm-Ups took place in Brighton, Bristol, Glasgow, Hastings, Islington, Liverpool, Oxford and Stratford.
Register: Upcoming Warm-Up training on Wednesday 21st December, 7pm.
Around 9.30am, Glasgowegians Warmed-Up outside Scottish Power HQ and sat down with blankets, sleeping bags and hot water bottles, singing and dancing, and chanting “Bills too high, pay too small, we need Energy For All!” to stay the morning chill away.
In London, Just Stop Oil supporters got cosy in beds and sofas in Harrods while FPA and Don’t Pay members warmed up in the British Museum.
In Hastings, locals entered a branch of Barclays bank – while others warmed up in shopping centres around the country.
You can support the campaign by emailing your MP to demand a Universal basic energy allowance and calling on the government to keep us #WarmThisWinter.
Join Fuel Poverty Action and National Pensioners Convention: 26 November 12pm, George V’s statue, Old Palace Yard Westminster
As always at this time of year, FPA will be joining with pensioners’ organisations to mark the release of statistics on “excess winter deaths”. Each year in the UK around 10,000 people die because they cannot afford to heat their homes. That figure is from before the pandemic and it’s likely to be still higher now: Covid and cold homes do not go well together. FPA will join with the National Pensioners Convention and speak at the event on 26 November to mark these tragic, desperate, and avoidable deaths.
We will demand action. There is no shortage of money to help us keep warm:
Oil corporations, internationally, are returning exceptional profits on the spoils of the extra high prices we are paying. During COP26 FPA wrote to its President, Alok Sharma, demanding a windfall tax on this money — to be used to relieve fuel poverty.
This spring, the government closed down early the £1.5bn Green Homes Grant scheme, which was supposed to help UK householders insulate our homes. But the National Audit Office found it was “botched” and collapsed after just six months. The money has not been replaced.
30 UK millionaires are asking for their billions to be used to support people who are struggling to survive. They have told the chancellor, “We know where you can find that money – tax wealth holders like us.”
A wealth tax on the richest 1% of households in Britain – those with fortunes in the excess of £3.6m – could create at least an additional £70 billion a year — a huge sum, around the same as the US$100 bn a year that all the rich nations together claimed they couldn’t find to support frontline countries to adapt to climate change!
Within a few miles of the obscene wealth of private individuals who have profited from contracts and price hikes during the pandemic, are millions of UK families and pensioners going to bed hungry or shivering in the cold. Families are rationing gas, electricity, and heating, sometimes to an hour or less a day. Children are unable to study, or play. Parents don’t know how they will get through the winter. Almost every health condition is exacerbated by cold. And people who are old, disabled, homeless, or suffering from a long term illness, are at risk of death.
Deaths from fuel poverty in this wealthy country are an obscenity. They’re a result of deliberate policies on housing, fossil fuels, pensions, benefits, taxes, and wages. This cannot be allowed to stand.
JOIN THE PROTEST
Friday 26 November 2021, Midday. Please bring banners and publicise the event so that we have a good attendance. If you can help with a portable sound system, please let us know!
Assemble by George V’s statue at Old Palace Yard Westminster opposite the House of Lords.Then march to 10 Downing Street where a letter will be handed in.
Speakers include TUC President Sue Ferns, Lord Prem Sikka, and Ruth London from Fuel Poverty Action.
We are run by a small team of volunteers. In January, we brought on Maddy Winters – a campaigner with a decade of cold home experience, for ten hours a week at £15/hour. This underpins everything our wider group does unpaid. We will use your donations to extend this employment.
We are in more demand than ever. Over three million people in the UK live in fuel poverty and up to 140,000 households are being added each day to the list of families forced to choose between heating and eating.
Promote our crowdfunder in your networks – share the link: crowdfunder.co.uk/fuelpovertyaction, retweet us, share our Facebook post, with your own endorsement or click the links below:
The Winter Fuel Payment is a tax free payment of £100 – £300 paid each autumn to people aged over 66. It is a life-saver for many pensioners who are struggling to keep warm. But some people who get it don’t feel they need it, and want to pass it on. If that’s you, there are loads of ways to do that through charities (on the web, see “donate winter fuel payment”) — or you could consider giving all or part of it to FPA’s crowdfunder!
IF, HOWEVER, YOU ARE STRUGGLING TO KEEP THE HEAT ON, HERE ARE SOME SOURCES OF ADVICE AND HELP:
You may qualify for fuel vouchers, through the Fuel Bank Foundation, CItizens Advice, your local authority or elsewhere.
The crisis you are in is not your fault. GET HELP!
Join us! Winter Deaths Protest on 26 November with FPA and National Pensioners Convention
As always at this time of year, FPA will be combining with pensioners’ organisations to mark the release of statistics on “excess winter deaths”, and the thousands who die each year because they can’t afford to heat their homes. The statistics are less reliable than ever this year, in the time of Covid-19, but the number of deaths is bound to be even greater: imagine having Covid in a cold home! FPA will join with the National Pensioners Convention and speak at the event on 26 November. If you’d like to do more to mark this day, and to highlight the pain and suffering of cold homes, even for those who do not die from them, let us know!
JOIN THE PROTEST
Friday 26 November 2021, Midday Assemble by George V’s statue at Old Palace Yard Westminster opposite the House of Lords.Then march to 10 Downing Street
Please bring banners and try and publicise locally so that we have a good attendance. Speakers invited include Frances O’Grady TUC, Lord Prem Sikka and Ruth London Fuel Poverty Action.
For further information please contact 020 8668 2840 / [email protected]
We turned 10! (And threw a party.)
For a whole decade we’ve been advising, campaigning, and joining with dozens of other organisations – from tenants and residents associations to climate campaigns – to organise for change. As well as supporting people in crisis, we will continue to press the government for real solutions: liveable incomes, affordable, climate-friendly energy, and safe, warm housing.
To celebrate this milestone, we got together on Zoom to share memories and play games. As well as look to the future. You can watch the event here.
Thank you to everyone who attended and made this such a special gathering.
Where is the money going?
The huge rise in energy prices this autumn follows on from a previous increase last April and there is another rise expected next spring. Millions of people do not know how in the world they will survive the winter, with household finances already stretched to breaking point and further cuts to benefits, pensions and public services. While the government has rowed back to a degree on the Universal Credit cut for people who are in waged work, the full £20 per week cut is in effect for mothers at home looking after young children, and people with coping with disabilities who cannot manage a waged job on top of that. (Both are working!)
Meanwhile oil companies have been making a killing in profits, and planning to invest their takings in dividends for shareholders and further investment in fossil fuel extraction, exploration and development — just as the world acknowledges that the climate is on a knife-edge, threatening everything we hold dear. FPA have been demanding resources for — quickly, safely, and accountably — making our homes energy efficient, and rebalancing the energy pricing system so that it is no longer those who have least, and who use least energy, who pay the highest price for what they need. That is now more urgent than ever.
In the middle of COP26 with two of our members up in Glasgow, FPA wrote to Alok Sharma demanding that the huge profits now being made by Big Oil should not be invested in shareholders pockets, or in further drilling for fossil fuels. Instead they should be used to relieve fuel poverty, and accomplish the urgent switch away from these unaffordable, unsustainable source of energy. We called for a swingeing windfall tax on the super-profits now rolling into the industry — and an end to subsidies from the public purse. According to the International Monetary Fund, governments spent $450bn in direct subsidies for the fossil fuel industry!
We have been on the news!
Who should, and who SHOULDN’T be paying the price for disastrous decisions on energy. On GBTV News 18 October 2021
FPA has been called on continuously by the media and we have been happy to use this platform, ranging from the Financial Times and Women’s Hour, to small local papers, the Daily Express, the Mail, the Morning Star. We’ve had regular live appearances on Sky and other TV stations, were interviewed on LBC,and have reached further afield via Reuters, Bloomberg, and Euronews. We’ve done interviews with journalists and tv stations from France, the Netherlands, Japan and Korea as well as the UK and international agencies and publications like Reuters and Bloomberg. Another major part of our role has been helping to put journalists from the UK and round the world in touch with people in fuel poverty who want to speak out about their own situation and that of their families and neighbours, including FPA members like Diane.
You pay more for energy if you have least to begin with. Ruth London on Sky News 21 October 2021
We have been working with Insulate Britain and Action on Empty Homes
As well as publicly supporting the Insulate Britain campaign we have worked to make available to them the experience and perspectives accumulated in our 10 years of campaigning for insulation, emphasising the need for it to be safe, non-toxic, and non-flammable, for it to be installed in a way that is fully accountable to residents, and for the costs of insulation and of rising prices of fossil fuels to be borne by those responsible for climate change, not people struggling to pay their bills (contributions partly reflected in IB’s “Technical Summary“)
We have also highlighted the issue of insulation with the campaign against empty homes, with Ruth London speaking at Action on Empty Homes’ highly successful rally and day of action on 9 October, suggesting that owners of homes left empty should be required to undertake a deep retrofit — much easier while no one is living in the building! – and then make them available for residents of other homes being retrofitted with insulation and new heating systems to decant into while their homes are a building site. See below re another event coming up on 11 November.
Our many media appearances this autumn have helped call attention to the scandal of empty homes and the UK’s appallingly leaky, ill-repaired and poorly insulated housing.
We’re releasing a song! Can you help?
Calling all our supporters with links to the music industry – we need help releasing a Fuel Poverty themed single – written and recorded by one of our supporters! Can you help guide us to releasing a single? Get in touch on [email protected].
The Coalition has also been pressing for priority for people in fuel poverty in the EU’s “Renovation Wave”.
And it has been working out demands on energy pricing and taxes to relieve the devastating effects of rising gas prices while still not increasing state subsidies of fossil fuels. That last discussion in particular, FPA has played a major part in. It is ongoing. If you’d like to contribute to it, please let us know!
At the same time we’ve been working with others in the UK including notably the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, and SHAC (below).
Social Housing Action Campaign
PLEASE SUPPORT SHAC’S big UK Housing Awards Protest in Greenwich on 25 November. Or you might like to go inside instead?
“If you’re a bit strapped for cash, you only need £345 plus VAT for a seat in the standard zone, a three-course dinner, half a bottle of wine, and a reception drink upon arrival. £4,495 plus VAT on the other hand will get you …a magnum of chilled champagne on arrival, followed by 10 bottles of beer, 5 bottles of premium wine, a three-course dinner, premium chocolates gifts on each place setting.“
Together with people from Peabody, Clarion, OHG and many other so-called social housing providers,who have been organising and winning in their fight for acceptable housing, we’ll have more fun in the street!
25 November, in person, 5 pm in Greenwich — join us joining SHAC for their “biggest event of the year” — a protest at the hugely corrupt UK Housing Awards ceremony.
26 November, 12.0, Westminster, join National Pensioners Convention (NPC) and FPA to mark the release of statistics on “excess winter deaths”. Speakers include Frances O’Grady TUC and Lord Prem Sikka as well as ourselves.
It’s been a long, hard winter, and we hope you’re all well. Here’s the latest news from FPA:
Rising Prices
On 5 February Ofgem announced their price cap increase, meaning a hefty rise in costs for everyone on default energy tariffs (and a likely rise in fixed tariffs as well, when they come due). Ruth London was on BBC TV News all day, with a substantial slot connecting issues from insulation and cladding to universal credit, pensions and homeschooling – and the need for a total reset because what we have now is killing us:
Check it out on Youtube. We also got a short bit on ITV’s Good Morning Britain, and a statement in Energy Live News. We’re glad to have a chance to comment, with the UK’s already holey safety net just a memory, and now with wages so low and in the middle of a pandemic, any increase in energy prices must come with immediate changes in our resources.
At the same time however, we’ve been hard at work as usual on heat networks, on insulation and cladding, on pensioners’ health and standard of living, and have pitched in on issues of heat pumps, regeneration, fracking, and more.
A “heat network” works like central heating for a whole block, estate, or district.
Phoenix Works
We’re working with Peabody tenants in a new build Tower Hamlets development, Phoenix Works. They have been battling sky high tariffs – and have won a reduction by one half!We’ll shortly be making this public, so watch this space. They are still fighting to get a full refund of their overpayment, secure a better tariff for the future, get repairs done promptly, get better heat controls,and above all to make the heat provider accountable to them – which at present, they are not.
Oval Quarter
Oval Quarter, Lambeth, where FPA was heavily involved in bringing heat provider E.ON toaccount, is again having serious problems with unreliability. We’re back working with them after a gap of several years, following publication of our report on that heat network, Not Fit for Purpose in 2017.
New Festival Quarter & St Clements
We’re also working with two other Tower Hamlets heat networks – at New Festival Quarter and at St Clements, where residents have long been fighting scandalous charges, and other issues including insulation and cladding. We recently organised a meeting for residents from all three developments to meet together with their MP, Apsana Begum. On 4 February Ms Begum committed to taking their issues forward with the council, the GLA, the heat provider and landlords, and in parliament.
Southwark
In Southwark, the battle continues to get heat networks in working order – and in the meantime to win compensation so that when they are not working, residents at least can afford to use space heaters to keep warm. Despite all the efforts of residents, Southwark Group of Tenants Organisations, and FPA the council’s assurances that “no one will be out of pocket” have not been fulfilled. We’re told there will finally be a policy of automatic compensation of £3 per day, starting in April this year. In the meantime the suffering – and the health costs – are unbearable. See the account in Inside Housing. People in cold homes are taking to twitter to raise concerns of their council home without heating, or one of a relative. One tweets: “OAPs in block Clifton Estate SE15 fed up with communal heating ALWAYS going off EVERY year during COLDEST spells” . Last week another tweeter asked: “if someone dies from a cold home, is this corporate manslaughter?”
Broken promises on national Covid protection
In May 2020, many heat providers signed an Agreement to ensure that heat network customers were protected and supported during the COVID pandemic, to prevent disconnections and cold. The latest monitoring report, by the Heat Trust, finds:
“rising numbers of disconnections from some suppliers during the coldest part of the year, low reconnection rates and declining levels of support given to pre-payment meter customers. Heat Trust is also concerned at failures of some suppliers to keep to the terms of the Agreement and report on their activities.”
Between persistent outages and unbearable prices
Unregulated, unaccountable and uncaring heat providers are likely to have deaths on their accounts this Covid winter, despite widespread and determined efforts. We will never know how many.
Residents of Pendleton Together’s high rise towers in Salford are taking their landlord to court over fire risks, maintenance, ineffective heating through NIBE heat pumps, and the freezing temperatures they are enduring now that their cladding has finally been removed. Read FPA member Graeme Langton’s account here. And see here a write up in Manchester Evening News, exposing the terrible cold that Pendleton residents are facing this winter. A group of Pendleton residents plus a reporter from the Salford Star led a breakout group at our December conference Making Green Come True. So far, Pendlton Together seem to disregard all public disclosure of what they are imposing on their residents.
In the last few days, and in the same week that the fire risks at Pendleton were highlighted in the Grenfell inquiry, the fire door through which residents would escape the building has been left broken and unusable. Residents were not even informed or given any alternative evacuation plan.
Pembroke Park, Hillingdon – light at the end of the tunnel
There is finally good news from this estate, where FPA has been supporting residents for many years. After years of pressure from residents, and the changing climate post-Grenfell, a new estate management has decided to do something about the fact that the estate was built by Taylor Woodrow in 2010 with its insulation missing. Tenant Tracey Rogers wrote in, in January to tell us:
“after 10 years of being cold, A2 sent 4 people around today to investigate my moans. The outcome is my house has no insulation, my sons room has to have all the walls and ceiling removed, the insulation in the loft had all fallen down (what little was there) I have to be moved out of my property for at least 6 weeks. So yes I have been literally heating the street. My next battle will be compensation.”
Tracey later got back in touch to tell us that her home was a building site, the workmen wear no masks, no alternative accommodation was offered and her daughter and grandchildren, who live with her, have had to move out and find somewhere to live for six weeks in the middle of a pandemic.
There are still many residents in Pembroke Park whose homes are not being insulated at all, and who have no idea when or if they will be.
Regeneration, embodied carbon, communities and fuel poverty
In January we worked with others at the Radical Housing Network to formulate questions to mayoral and GLA candidates on embodied carbon and other environmental effects of regeneration, also touching on rent control, and the use of empty homes. This was following taking part in their meeting about Lambeth’s on Central Hill estate, where people have been camping to prevent demolition of a close community as part of a regeneration scheme. Early in the morning of 10 February, demolition workers arrived outside Truslove House, sparking a demolition resistance action. Police initially left the occupation alone, but the Council called a Gold Command meeting and at its request the police returned (20+ police with vans) to clear the occupation and cordon off the site. The resistance saw 25 people attending over 6 hours. The campaign will continue.
Many of these housing and heating issues will be raised at Homes for All’s “Housing and Health Emergency” summit, Saturday 20th of February. Some of us from FPA will be taking part in the SHAC workshop exploring how housing workers and housing association residents have worked together to get results. Other workshops include one focusing on evictions, disrepair, rents, Grenfell, health and poverty. It will all be on Zoom. Do come along and let us know if there’s something you would like discussed. You can register here.
We are in communication with Plastics Rebellion about running a session on Plastics in Construction at their weekly Tuesday evening Zoom.
We hope to talk about the widespread and very large-scale use of plastic as a building material, specifically for insulation and cladding. This led directly to the Grenfell fire, as FPA laid out at the time here. The Grenfell connection could add a pointed message to the plastics campaign.
We have consistently raised issues of heating and insulation at meetings and conferences in the housing movement. As Suz Muna of Social Housing Action Campaign (SHAC) told us, regarding their 28 January housing safety conference:
“we’ll be happy to have you speak at the conference. Your group raises an often hidden and silent health hazard, but one which blights many lives.”
Similarly, On 19 January we attended and contributed to the launch of The London Tenants’ Manifesto on the right to warm, and affordably warm, safe and healthy housing. We tweeted out the Manifesto here.
On 27 January we joined forces with South East London Community Energy (SELCE) to speak at Lewisham Pensioners Forum Annual Health Fayre on ‘How to Take Action on Fuel Poverty’.
We have also put people who want to speak out in touch with the media, and have done extensive briefing of members of the press on fuel poverty (eg. for the Mirror’s current campaign), and on housing issues that leave residents cold (eg. for Inside Housing and the Building Centre). After contact with another journalist last year, we received a copy of her final report on incinerators, which are often a heat source for district heating, but a pollution source for miles around. Josephine Moulds dissects their low carbon credentials and the pricing of these schemes.
On Saturday 19th March 2016, Fuel Poverty Action came together with local residents from Myatt’s Field South, and pensioners from Lambeth’s Pensioners Action Group and Older People’s Alliance to stage a Warm Up in Lambeth library, threatened with closure, to demonstrate how vital a public resource it is, especially for people living in fuel poverty. Warm homes for all!
Huge thanks to John Lubbock for coming and filming the action. Watch the film and check him out on Twitter!
At 11am on Saturday local activists gathered at Brixton Reference Library to protest fuel poverty with a “Warm-Up”. After handing out leaflets and chanting slogans like “Warm homes are a right, Here to stay, Here to fight” in Windrush Square, they moved into the library and occupied the foyer for an hour. They sought to highlight that Lambeths’ libraries are a lifeline for many people, providing warmth, community, and access to vital services, and yet they’re threatened with closure. This will only exacerbate deaths from fuel poverty, which hit 43000 in the winter of 14/15, whilst the Big Six rip off the public by £1.7 billion a year. The action was called and organised by Fuel Poverty Action (FPA), Lambeth Pensioners Action Group (LAMPAG), Lambeth Older Peoples Alliance (LOPA) and Myatts Field South Tenants and Residents Association (MFS TRA). Continue reading “PRESS RELEASE: Campaigners against fuel poverty take action in Brixton Library”
