A lot of Lambeth council tenants (about 3500 properties) live on estates with a heat network – a communal heating system that works like central heating for the whole building or the whole estate. And they pay a fixed amount to the council for that as part of their service charge. In April 2023, there was a huge 353% increase in the cost of this so some people were paying over £80 a week, for heat and hot water alone. The increase has been halved this year, but prices remain about 175% higher than they were two years ago. Unlike people with their own gas boiler, they can’t switch supplier, can’t turn it off, and can’t reduce the cost by cutting down on heat.
On top of this, they started receiving threats of eviction, telling them that if they can’t pay this much, they can give up their homes. And getting actual notices of seeking possession, and court proceedings – no matter if they are elderly or disabled or had young children. Obviously, people have been desperate. They tried to appeal to the council but it was like a brick wall.
Council officers know what residents are facing. They have even been to some of the estates, and heard what people are facing, but their response has been: you must pay us your rent or leave. They have designated a service charge for heat and hot water as part of rent – despite the fact that there is no housing benefit for it and no regulatory limit on heat and hot water increases, like there is with rent and the domestic energy market. To square the circle, they make patronising suggestions that people take on a second job, work longer hours – even those with children – or use payments intended for disability needs, or do just anything to raise money to pay them. A lot of tenants have been going hungry, and working day and night to try to raise these sums. Pensioners are giving Lambeth money they had saved up for their funeral. There are people pushed to the point of mental breakdowns, struggling to hold things together for their children.
Starting London Tenants Heat Campaign
Tenants and leaseholders came to London Tenants Federation and Fuel Poverty Action for support. Together, we gave them a hand in forming a group, which became Lambeth Tenants Heat Campaign (LTHC). LTHC has regular meetings of tenants and some leaseholders from several estates, all with the same problem. We would like other Lambeth council estates on heat networks to join the campaign. It uses twitter @fight4heat_LBL and an email [email protected] as effective methods of getting its message out to the public and powers that be. LTHC also uses FPA’s website as a good signpost for people to learn about what is happening.
LTHC wrote to Lambeth for over two months to get the council to speak to them. Courageously, LTHC members spoke out to the media. Tenants appeared twice on BBC TV, were in the national papers, local papers, on the Eddie Nestor show on Radio London. And they’ve been all over social media. A total of 69 housing campaigns and other related organisations signed an Open Letter to Lambeth supporting the tenants’ demands. By amplifying its demands through social media, news media and protest, the group finally got a meeting with the councillor responsible for housing.
Recently LTHC organised a demonstration where attending tenants held one letter each of the words: “Lambeth, We need to talk and You need to Listen!”. This idea, and help with the signs, came from tenants on a heat network in Camden. People do talk to each other – even across boroughs! And we’ve learned that Lambeth is a real outlier. Lots of places have had a steep rise in heat charges but nowhere else do tenants face eviction threats! This is not a force of nature, which sadly cannot be helped. It is a choice that has been brutally applied.
On 20 March, Lambeth finally agreed to meet LTHC. We met the Council’s cabinet member for housing, Maria Kay, and its income development manager, Mark Gillies, who is in overall control of administering rents. The councillor heard tenants say they have received letters threatening eviction proceedings and she said it shouldn’t be happening. Despite everything, she said they hadn’t been aware that people were getting notices of seeking possession for heat arrears. She and the income development manager promised to look into these cases because “this should not happen”. They also said that if people are paying they “should not be getting” letters, and Mark Gillies said he would investigate how that was happening.
So altogether, this was positive news! Lambeth’s policy is not to evict on the grounds of arrears due to heat network charges. But we are aware that Lambeth has a long history of promising one thing and then saying the opposite, or saying one thing and doing the opposite. There has recently been a change of portfolio, so we may need to reinforce the message with a new cabinet member for housing. Some residents are justifiably very sceptical of anything Lambeth says, and also extremely angry about the way they’ve been terrorised. Their lives and their children’s lives have been turned upside down by this.
In fact, a number of people have had notices of seeking possession since that meeting, and residents are still being told they have to find the money somehow or lose their homes. Maybe the message hasn’t trickled down to the officers yet? Or the automated systems are in charge now? It has not only been threats – at least one case has been taken to court!
Enter the courts
On 19 April a twitter thread from Macintosh Court Residents Association (@court_sw16) reported that in a court case at the Gee St Courthouse, a judge had sided with a tenant who had been taken to court by Lambeth for service charge arrears. The post says the judge “told Lambeth to sort themselves out . . . service charges and rent should be separated, she [the judge] cannot evict for service charge arrears, she said. Lambeth must not send him [the tenant] any more threatening letters or phone calls for 3 months while they sort this mess out.” The Residents Association says they have been told there are more summonses in the pipeline, but asks: “Is Lambeth Council really gonna force a bunch of our elderly and disabled to make this journey after being told not to waste the court’s time?”
The judgement has not been made public, and it is unclear what is supposed to happen in three months’ time. Residents are left uneasy about their future. But this is still very encouraging. It has been LTHC’s position from the start that heat charges are not rent and cannot be the basis of eviction.
Computer says GO
The point about separating heat charges from rent, referred to in the thread about the court case, is crucial. At the 20 March meeting, Maria Kay and Mark Gillies explained that possession notices were triggered automatically. Since then we’ve found out that Lambeth’s software makes no distinction between rent arrears and and heat charge arrears, so whenever your total arrears go over a certain amount, the computer sends out the notice of seeking possession. And despite all the complaints and the pleading letters and the calls to councillors and calls to the office, and supporting letters from advice agencies, and all the media, and 69 organisations signing an open letter written by FPA and LTF… despite all this, no one has seen fit to fix that little glitch in the software. Computer says go.
Wouldn’t it be extraordinary if Lambeth’s computer software is allowed to defy both the council’s stated policy and a court, and continues to press for tenants to be evicted because of their heat charge arrears? Extraordinary things do happen these days. The Post Office’s computer saga is not the only case where people’s lives have been devastated, or indeed ended, by unhearing uncaring electronic machines. It is not the only case where the machine’s human masters were told – and knew – what was happening, and chose to allow it to continue. But in our meeting with the head of housing and homelessness and the income development manager on 20 March, it was explicit that they wanted to avoid a Horizon scandal in Lambeth. The head of housing said they would work with, not against, the residents, and would investigate what was going wrong and stop it happening.
The question is – against a maverick assault on council tenants, what is the weight of the combined forces of the tenants, leaseholders, other residents, supporters, sympathetic councillors and council officers, the housing movement, the many people fighting for fair energy pricing, the remaining legal protections available in the UK, and the imminent legislation on heat networks? Will all this be decisive in defending Lambeth tenants’ homes? Will we force the computer to blink first?
Their software can and must be changed. There must be no such evictions and no more “automated” warning letters. Lambeth must urgently make public what they told us in our meeting: that they will not evict for heat arrears. It is urgent that they make this clear so they stop destroying their residents’ mental health. They must first notify the residents who’ve had these threatening letters, so people can sleep at night and start eating three times a day. They might want to consider an apology…
Then we have to make sure the heat and hot water actually works consistently, to an acceptable standard – on top of the high prices it is now very unreliable and inefficient as well. And the council has to work out payments that people can actually afford. But we are a long way from where we were when this campaign started.
This guest bloghas been prepared by tenants and residents of several Lambeth housing estates who have come together to form the Lambeth Tenants Heat Campaign, with support from Fuel Poverty Action and London Tenants Federation. More affected residents and other supportive organisations and individuals are now getting in touch.
The blog includes the residents’ demands, background information, personal testimonies (anonymous and otherwise), statements of support, and their contact address. They have written to Lambeth Council requesting an urgent meeting.
Is Lambeth council forcing tenants into homelessness by conflating energy costs with “rent”? Since April 2023 Lambeth council has threatened heat network users who can’t afford the 350% rise in their service charges with eviction. Both council tenants and leaseholders are affected by these increases, which can bring costs for heat and hot water alone to over £67 per week… in one case it totalled over £83!
We understand the falling price of gas may mean lower bills from this April, but they will still be too high for many of us to keep up with and we will already be in debt, struggling to catch up with our arrears. On top of this, for many of us, the heating and hot water system is constantly failing, leaving families and pensioners freezing cold.
For the majority of renters, rent and energy bills are separate. The rising cost of living and the energy crisis have put many into fuel debt but in most cases householders are able to make adjustments like changing providers, using less energy, making homes more energy-efficient or getting a prepayment meter. For Lambeth residents on heat networks, there is no such recourse available. We have no control over the provider, no thermostat in many cases, and no discussion over the way our heat and hot water is paid for.
The poorest residents who rely on financial assistance like housing benefit to meet increases in rent have found the service charges are not eligible for support, presenting them with no choice other than to sink into debt. Parents, especially single parents, and their children are suffering and going without necessities; vulnerable groups such as those with disabilities are being pressured to use their care allowance or PIP to pay the service charges. Those signposted to apply for discretionary housing and emergency support payments discovered that these payments – if obtained at all – did not cover the spiralling costs.
Rather than recognise the issue, with an urgency to separate massively hiked energy prices from normal service charges, the council is erroneously and egregiously counting fuel debt as unpaid rent, wilfully setting us on the road to risking our homes. It is service charge abuse to allow this situation to persist. The council even made the callous suggestion to Lambeth residents that we should just leave if unable to pay the hikes.
Even the disabled, the elderly, people with young children or other caring responsibilities are still receiving threatening letters. The council has not said what should happen if we are evicted. Where are we supposed to go? Will Lambeth rehouse us? And who will move into our vacated flats? Where will Lambeth find people eligible for council housing, who can afford these charges?
Residents from affected estates like Roupell Park, China Walk, Cotton Gardens, Lambeth Towers and Macintosh Court are joining up and working together to challenge this grave injustice. Lambeth Council should not and will not be allowed to ride roughshod over the mental, physical and financial health and wellbeing of its residents. There has to be an acknowledgment from Lambeth Council that it has been grossly unfair in its approach and its methods, with the cessation of eviction threats as a start.
OUR DEMANDS
Stop the threats of eviction
Lambeth Council has been quietly harassing its most vulnerable residents by sending out notices of seeking possession based on tenants inability to keep up with 353% increase in heating & hot water bill. Some tenants have been told that the evictions won’t be pursued. But as the council refuses to confirm or deny this statement in writing, residents have been left in limbo: we cannot count on this and even the threat destroys our mental health. and presses people to pay what they can’t afford by cutting down on other essentials or going into expensive debt. At least one tenant has now had a red letter notice saying “Case in court for possession…”
Stop saying ‘rent arrears’
Inability to pay heating bills should not be deemed as rent arrears. Renters not on heat networks don’t have their heating and hot water as part of their rent. When their energy costs increase, they aren’t threatened with eviction due to their gas or electric company charging more. Why should those on heat networks face eviction? Rent increases are capped, so if heat charges are part of rent how can they shoot up over 350%? And how can heat charges be counted as rent when we can’t receive Housing Benefit for them?
Stop setting heat prices as if Lambeth weren’t going to get a discount on the gas purchased annually to burn for our heating
Like households with private boilers, heat suppliers are also entitled to government help to deal with the huge increase in gas prices. We understand Lambeth has applied for this discount but hasn’t yet received it. Yet our charges have been set as if the discount doesn’t exist. And then we’re being threatened with eviction if we can’t pay them!
Stop fleecing tenants for your mistakes
In the financial year (FY) 22/23 Lambeth underpaid for communal heating – that is Lambeth officers’ administrative error. In the FY 23/24, Lambeth TRIPLED bills to cover Lambeth’s mistakes! They decided to recover their losses in ONE YEAR at a time when gas prices are at an all time high!
Recover costs over 10 years not one year, or not at all
Lambeth should engage with tenant representatives and discuss how best to recover 22/23 underpayment due to their error and ease the burden on tenants
Reimburse tenants for the costs they have unfairly incurred and compensate for the stress and anxiety heaped onto them
Some have been forced into debt and others have gone without food and faced other hardships. There should be compensation for the anguish caused to residents by this nightmare.
Immediate repairs and optimisation of inefficient heating systems There is government money available for this. Residents are not responsible for dysfunctional and dilapidated infrastructure which often breaks down, and should not be picking up the tab for it.
Metering will not fix our heat network problems Some estates are set to have meters installed instead of a flat rate charge for all residents. This is not the priority for addressing heat network issues. It could enable us to save a little money if we “choose” to freeze instead of heating our homes, but not much – a large part of the bill will be a standing charge that you can’t avoid even if you go without heat and hot water entirely.
Immediate repairs and refurbishment to draughty, poorly insulated and sometimes damp homes that cost a fortune to heat and can never be kept warm.
Expansion of the use ofsolar panels, wind and other renewable options for reducing the use of expensive fossil-fuelled energy.
Transparent billing information
Our landlord fails to provide us, its tenants, with a complete breakdown of costs. We need to know what we are paying for and why. To that end, external oversight of Lambeth’s heat charges must be sought to ensure calculations are correct and transparent.
The council must compensate residents when communal heating/hot water services to a block break down – the rebate should duly be added to resident accounts after interruption to supply is noted. We should not have to scurry and hassle to obtain our just compensation.
The council must also keep accurate records regarding the function of heating and hot water supplies. We ask that a transparent and straightforward protocol be adopted to compensate residents when communal heating/hot water services break down
The heating systems must urgently be made fit for purpose so this does not happen again and again. It is adding further insult to injury when hot water/heating is not available and the council continues to charge exorbitantly without providing an actual service. There are several words for charging for a service without delivering it, including ‘theft’.
HOW THIS AFFECTS US
The following testimonies have been kindly and bravely shared by Lambeth residents impacted by the service charge hikes
Testimonial – AH, lone parent Wedgwood House
I am a single mother to a teenage boy as well as a carer for my elderly mother and in receipt of benefits.
My rent is paid by housing benefit, so my arrears are solely on service charges.
I have spoken to the Lambeth rents team on countless occasions. I even attended a meeting with them to discuss this issue. We were told that Lambeth was trying to recoup two years worth of deficit, which is why there was such an increase in these charges. However if we were to pay what we could and not be negligent then we did not have to worry too much because they understood how these charges impacted on low income households. But so far I have received two threatening letters from Lambeth seeking repossession/action to take me to court.
This has majorly impacted on my physical and psychological well-being. I worry this is going to affect my son’s GCSEs because he worries that I’m not eating/sleeping. I have also sought out medical help from my GP.
I’m really at a crossroads on what to do next. It’s a spiral of an accumulation of arrears. No matter what I pay, my arrears still go up.
Living under the umbrella of the threat of homelessness is not easy…
Testimonial – Lone parent, Roupell Park Estate, Lambeth
I am a lone parent of a little boy. I live on Roupell Park estate, living here since 2016. I can’t work that much as I am a sole carer of my son. I can’t make enough money.
When I saw the increase I thought if I update with the housing benefit department they would increase the benefit payment. A few months later in June, I received a letter saying that I was in arrears for my rent, around £600. I didn’t have that kind of money to pay it off. I’ve had to borrow money from friends. I still owe them.
It’s been a few months of a proper depression. I didn’t even contact Lambeth Talking Therapies (IAPT) because I know if I am not suicidal or anything for them to consider risk of serious harm, then I wasn’t going to get an appointment
My son suffered seeing me in that state. He is eight years old and he is already realising that we don’t have money because I’ve had to stop buying certain things and can’t afford his after-school clubs anymore.
I am in receipt of working tax credit, yet we spend everything on bills and food and there is nothing else left. I think those charges are just too much. I live in my flat alone with my son. We are not using that much heating and hot water. In October I stayed at my friend’s house in Brixton, he’s got separate meters just for his flat, and using hot water and heating for ten days nonstop, we only paid about (I checked the meters) £17 for ten days. And we (heating network users) pay £50 weekly, seven days.
I’ve never been in that situation in my life, that I have to really calculate what I’m buying to eat. Before it was things like buying things for my son, going out and eating out. I could forget about that. But even groceries?
I know that lots of other people are affected as well, that’s what my housing officer told me, that he knows there are many people in the same situation on the estate. Nobody consulted us personally, nobody warned us. It just came like that and nobody conceded that most of us, especially a single parent household, don’t use that much energy and we shouldn’t be charged so much.
Testimonial – Lone parent, Wedgwood House
When I received my rent increase letter from the council I was shocked and very anxious. I couldn’t believe that they were putting up the heating, alone by £300 – which works out 306% in percentages. I couldn’t understand how this has been worked out.
I get help from universal credit as my wage isn’t enough per month, but universal credit does not help towards your heating bills.
Looking at my outgoings the only possible place to cut down from is food. I’m no longer able to buy fresh produce. I skip breakfast everyday and on occasions lunch too. I provide my son with all three meals a day, I come after him. The fact that we’re in a cost of living crisis, food has also risen ridiculously.
I often walk to work, to try and save on travel, which with my varicose veins and an ongoing foot problem, really isn’t ideal for my health. I can no longer buy any new clothes/toys; anything we wear is very much second-hand, from friends or family.
I spoke with a gentleman (councillor/council officer?) with a few other residents at the beginning of April 2023. He took our details and said he would get our questions answered. He emailed me on 19/04/2023 to inform me that he was still looking into our concerns but sadly I’m still yet to hear anything from him.
I’m now stuck in a cycle of having to regularly use my credit card for food purchases as I simply don’t have enough money to last me a month as my outgoings are more than my income.
Testimonial – Parent of child with disabilities, Roupell Park Estate, Lambeth.
I have lived in Lambeth at the same address for 20 odd years..
When I first read the letter I did not sleep very well at all because it was so shocking. At the time that I read the £50 increase I thought it was somehow me misreading it. I thought it was £50 extra a month. It wasn’t until I reread the letter that I then found out that it was a weekly charge – an extra £200-£250 a month.
My days, that was like a nail in the coffin for me. I’ve had to reduce how much food shopping I buy and how often I shop. For the first time ever, I had to be watching every penny that I spent. I mean it was very difficult not being able to afford buying clothes for the kids. You know, not being able to – and I work – to do just normal things. Being a Christian, my faith has really helped me through it. I found ways to cut back on every single thing but after paying the bills there’s hardly anything left.
My son has ADHD so I was able to apply for the disability living allowance. It took about five months to come through. It wasn’t until that came through that life got a little bit better and more bearable. Now I’m able to at least buy the children some clothes, buy just a little bit more food…
Testimonial – Lone parent Roupell Park
I am a council tenant and single parent with a primary school age child. We have
been informed at very short notice that our service charge has increased over 300%. It is four times what it was in March and I can’t keep up.
In some ways it would be preferable if the only thing being threatened is being cut off but if I can’t pay this I think the plan is for me and my child to be evicted.
Overnight, I have gone into severe rent arrears and there seems to be no recourse to
appeal. Low income tenants cannot get help e.g. from housing benefit because service charge is treated differently to rent burden. What on earth can I do? I have cut back to almost nothing but there is a limit to what you can cut back with a child without causing serious neglect of their needs. What help is there for us?
Testimonial – Sarah Bone, lone parent, Wedgwood House
I have been thinking about asking my GP to refer me to start using food banks, as soon I won’t be able to keep up with these payments… I would really like Lambeth to reconsider how they think what they are charging us for heating alone is acceptable and justifiable.
The hot water system is shocking, my hot water in the kitchen goes on and off constantly every time I wash up, I have to wait every so often for the hot to become hot again to finish washing a sink’s worth of dishes.
The bath I have to keep an eye on as this goes from hot to lukewarm constantly and I end up with a cold bath even when just using the hot tap to make one.
Testimonial – Tamara Lyn-Grant,mother of three, Wedgwood House
I have always strived to fulfil my responsibility of paying rent on time. However, this latest increase has forced me to reassess my already constrained budget, leaving me with limited resources to cover essential expenses such as utilities, groceries, and other necessities especially with three children to feed and clothe.
The ripple effect of this financial distress has impacted every aspect of my life, causing a considerable amount of emotional dis and uncertainty about the future.
PLEASE SUPPORT US
Ruth London of Fuel Poverty Action says:
It’s been a hard year for everyone, with energy bills at an all time high, but Lambeth’s increased charges are even worse. And it is not normal for anyone, even on other heat networks, to be threatened with eviction when they can’t pay heat bills. What are they supposed to do, when the charges are simply unpayable? It’s almost unbelievable that a council like Lambeth could do this to its residents. The tenants and leaseholders can only fight to end this cruel injustice.
Heat networks can be greener and more affordable than gas boilers. They are not supposed to be a disaster like this. We fully support the Lambeth tenants and we hope everyone who cares about warm, safe, affordable and sustainable housing will support them too, including Lambeth officers and councillors!
London Tenants Federation says:
Lambeth, like all London councils, finds itself in a position not of its choosing; having to deal with an energy crisis that is crippling. To decide to pass on the iniquitous nature of district heating charges, to the most vulnerable and least able to pay in many instances, is atrocious. Given the fact that the housing Ombudsman has taken special interest in the level of complaints and the service provided by Lambeth, it seems folly for the council to proceed in the callous and high-handed manner they have taken to date.
LTF supports the actions taken by Lambeth tenants and urges the council to meet the demands of the tenants, caught in the crosshairs of an under-regulated part of the energy sector and beholden to the council/industry monopoly for their energy supply. Tenants aren’t able to choose who supplies them with energy, that is a decision Lambeth makes. Mistakes made are not tenants’ mistakes, they are Lambeth council mistakes.
As a social landlord Lambeth should not be forcing tenants to choose between a warm home, food or homelessness and the mental distress that ensues.
A debt adviser for a local independent advice centre says:
I have seen a vast number of Lambeth tenants affected by the 353% increase in ineligible service charges since April 2023. This is a very serious issue with no obvious remedy; tenants are unable to claim a discretionary housing payment for the increase as a DHP does not cover ‘ineligible service charges’. I and my colleagues work hard to make sure that tenants are getting any benefits they are entitled to, and any discounts/income maximisation. However the rise in service charges is beyond anything I have ever seen before, and it is not realistic for any of the tenants I have seen to be able to pay for the increase, which in some cases is as much as £65 a week. I am concerned that people are being pushed into unmanageable debt and poverty by the enormous increase, and feel powerless to help. It is certainly the most challenging issue I have seen clients face in my six years as a debt adviser here.
SOME BACKGROUND ON HEAT NETWORKS
For more about Heat Networks see here. For detailed reports about a previous issue over heat networks in Lambeth, see here.
Heat networks – often loosely referred to as “district heating” – are like central heating for a whole block of flats, a whole estate and sometimes a whole area. Heat is produced centrally and distributed as hot water, through pipes.
Heat networks are promoted by the government as “green” because they can be converted to use heat pumps instead of expensive gas. They can work well. But when they work badly they cost the earth, using even more gas than individual boilers.
Residents are trapped in a monopoly without legal protections or rights and are suffering a huge injustice compared to people with other kinds of heating provision.
We cannot switch to another heating system or another supplier and cannot even cut down our costs by not using heat or hot water.
Except for metering and billing there are no regulations governing this industry. Though legislation is now pending it is likely to take years to come into force.
There are no price caps for residents. The government’s energy support plan in 2022 covered almost all households except those on communal heating (heat networks), which they deemed to be commercial businesses. In 2023 the government accepted we should also benefit from government discounts like other households. But the discounts have to be applied for and they go to the heat provider. Experience in Lambeth shows that the end user may get no help when it is needed.
The petition for Energy For All and its hundreds of thousands of signatures have made waves in the UK, shaking assumptions about what is needed and what is possible. Since we issued the call in February, the background information has changed.
The 54% increase in energy prices came in on 1 April – with an even bigger rise expected in October. Groups and people across the UK mobilizing and pledging to take action in response brought a halt to what could have been the most disastrous energy price rise in our lifetimes.
The Energy Price Guarantee, capped the unit price of energy at twice what it was last winter and was expected to cost up to £150bn in taxpayer’s money to the energy sector – now the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has stated this will be reviewed in April. Should this cap be lifted, the average household could pay around £4300 a year towards energy bills.
Increasingly, people are recognising that a price freeze or one-off windfall tax does not deliver the security that consumers need. Having seen our petition, a cross-party group of MPs has now opened up discussion within parliament on Energy For All, beginning with an Early Day Motion proposing a ‘Universal basic energy allowance’. You can email your MP asking them to sign!
Theneed to reverse the huge injustice of energy pricing remains as strong as ever.
The petition has brought this issue onto the agenda. Energy For All, as defined below, is as up-to-date and relevant as ever – a stepping stone away from inequality, and towards a more caring way of life. Join the next stages of the campaign to help make this demand a reality!
#EnergyForAll Petition- Everyone has a right to the energy needed for heating, cooking, and light (original post, February 2022)
Energy bills have risen dramatically in the last year – and the price cap is now to increase by 54% in April. This rise will leave millions of people like me struggling with cold homes. Many of us are facing damp, ill health, darkness, hunger and misery. Before the pandemic and the price increase around 10,000 people died each winter in the UK’s cold homes. Now even more will die.
I’m a pensioner living on a council estate in south London, and even before the recent price increases it was a struggle for me and my neighbours to keep warm. I am asthmatic, and many of us have health problems, as well as problems with our housing conditions. My grandchildren don’t even visit me because my house is too cold. I’ve been working with Fuel Poverty Action for more than ten years now. There are too many people who cannot afford or struggle to keep warm.
To end this outrage, Fuel Poverty Action is calling for #EnergyForAll.
#EnergyForAll means giving everyone a free amount of energy – that is enough energy, free, to cover the basics like heating, cooking, and lighting – to give us all the security we need, taking account of people’s actual needs related to their age, health, and housing. To pay for this new pricing system, Energy for All, we’re urging the Government to introduce a Windfall Tax on the profits of oil and gas producers, traders and suppliers, and to STOP subsidising fossil fuels with millions of pounds every day.
The UK is a wealthy nation, with many billionaires – now more than ever due to fortunes made in the pandemic. Many companies, including energy companies, are clocking up exceptional profits – while we struggle to pay the prices they are charging.
No one should get ill or die because of cold homes. No one should spend days in libraries or shopping centres to keep warm. Every home should be well repaired and insulated so we don’t need so much energy in the first place. We need your help to stop the outrage of fuel poverty – please sign and share this petition!
The government says we will get £200 back – but that will be a loan which we’ll have to repay in future bills. I have no idea where that money will come from in the future. They also say most people will get an extra £150 – very welcome, but far from enough. From April, many will see an increase of around £700 per year – more if your home is poorly insulated, or if you are on a prepayment meter, like many people on low incomes.
Instead of filling the pockets of fossil fuel companies, taxpayers money should be used to make sure everyone can keep warm. And the pricing system should be fair.
At present, we pay more per unit of gas or electricity if we use less of it. At present, we pay a high standing charge even when we use very little energy, or none at all. Our new pricing system, Energy for All, would eliminate that injustice and turn pricing right side up.
Please join my campaign to ensure we get #EnergyForAll.
In April 2022, Diane Skidmore, who started our #EnergyForAll petition, was interviewed by Rob Rinder on Talk TV about rising energy bills, watch below:
Note: “e4a: Energy for All” is a proposal for a new pricing structure for energy, and is entirely distinct from energy4all.co.uk which supports community renewable energy projects. Fuel Poverty Action also strongly supports the aims and cooperative initiatives of Energy4All.
The gas crisis is bringing misery and death to people already struggling to survive this winter.
It is the result of the government and Ofgem failing to take basic precautions for when international gas prices rise:
they allowed gas storage units to close;
failed to invest in meaningful energy efficiency programs;
and left privatised retailers to expose consumers to volatile wholesale prices without buying in advance.
We know that UK consumers cannot afford to pay energy companies more money for these mistakes. The money must come from thosebenefiting from the crisis.
In October we proposed a windfall tax on the profits of fossil fuel extractors. We argued that some part of the $65 billion they made between July and October must not be spent re-investing in fossil fuel exploration, development and extraction, which will further accelerate the climate crisis. Instead, a proportion of the excessive profits must be spent helping consumers keep warm and put food on the table.
Analysts now forecast that the average energy bill will rise almost 50%, to about £1865, this April. National Energy Action estimates this will push another 2 million people into fuel poverty, while of course creating further pain for the 4 million people already unable to pay their bills.
Across the industry, experts such as retail chief executives, former energy ministers and belatedly the labour party are now joining us in calling the government to announce a windfall tax before consumer prices rise in April.
We demand again that the windfall revenues from the international gas crisis are spent on helping people stay warm this winter. To ensure the poorest are reached:
This should be via a flat payment to each household and not means tested.
The money should not be spent on funding reduced bills through VAT removal, which would disproportionately benefit the richest consumers.
On 26 November Storm Arwen hit the UK, and lights went out all over north east England, northern Ireland, and Scotland Over a million homes were affected. Not only light but heat, leaving many households in isolated, windswept rural areas in a desperate situation.
While old stone cottages in North East England are primarily heated by oil or coal, electricity is required to run the systems, and sometimes to pump and filter drinking water. Insulation is generally poor, and the cold is extreme. Yet action has been slow. Over a week after the outage began, several thousand homes were still without power, and now, nearly two weeks later, there are still some homes without power, even as Storm Barra sweeps in, causing yet further outages.
FPA has been in touch with one active local resident in Northumberland for several years, grappling with the thorny question of how such homes can be affordably, and sustainably, kept warm. In this crisis he turned to us again, and we worked to help ensure people were able to get temporary power supply from generators. We have now sent the following letter to Jonathan Brearley, CEO of Ofgem, attaching compelling evidence of the urgent need for compensation to be released immediately and in cash. For a brief verbal recording of the argument for this, listen here.
Dear Jonathan Brearley,
Thank you for your prompt action on the issue of generators. The assurances we received from Northern Powergrid on this issue did not accord with what we heard from people on the ground, but we understand that everyone is -- or at least soon will be -- back on the grid so the generators are no longer an issue, at least at this time. What is, however, urgent is the way in which guaranteed service payments are to be made to affected households, and particularly the timing of these payments.
What will Ofgem do to ensure that people are not left desperately short of money over Christmas, or even longer, and that they are not forced to carry huge debts on behalf of their power supplier?
I attach Charles Palmer’s evidence of just how people are suffering financially, in the absence of compensation more such stories are pouring in all the time. This is followed by his explanation of why every affected household should be advanced a portion of the compensation they are entitled to, and why this should happen now.
We’ll look forward to hearing from you.
Ruth London
Responses from residents online
The below are the comments our local contact collected from a single community Facebook Group, Hexham Matters in the space of two hours on 7 December. There are dozens of similar groups. Some of the people worst affected are not on the internet or social media. But evidence is pouring in of how badly people are being affected. There are more responses every hour. Names here have been changed.
Tim: Not so much of a hardship story, but still mighty frustrating. Power went out, braced it with ice on the windows for two night before booking myself and family into a local hotel (separate rooms and an “extra night” due to me working nights)
All the usual, lost all our month’s food bought the day before the power cut, all the store bought food over the last 10 days that we never knew we’d be able to claim for so didn’t keep any forms of receipts until two days ago.
No contact at all even after requested by local MP due to health condition. Hours wasted trying to ring their help line to get the same script as others. 3 different engineers turned up over the last 11 days. All three said they had no idea there was no power (ne20) even though there was at least 4 reports by the morning of the 27th. Outage map changing both the expected fix AND the reported on date (I have screenshots, so do other affected neighbours)
Oh, and Northern Powergrid almost got my Facebook account banned for spam for commenting on an update post saying we’ve had no updates (update to that, they removed every comment and reply I tried to make about their lack of contact got time to play on Facebook but no time to actually contact people)
Thankfully power restored about 10am yesterday (not that I knew until I was at work at 5pm so had to pay an extra hotel night)
Biggest problem for me right now as someone how does their Christmas shopping in December… I’ve blown my entire paycheck for this month and dug out over half of the Christmas fund… Unless we get our refunds before the 22nd and amazon prime hasn’t cancelled my membership… No Christmas for us! Hand written cards and drawings under a snapped branch from the local fallen tree… Doing absolute wonders for my depression and anxiety, knowing after saving hard all this year I can barely bring any Christmas cheer “
Linda: “This was exactly my comments to them why would we get receipts we didn’t know they would refund when I ordered an emergency extra load of coal and rushed to costa to but hot drinks and toasties for my disabled son and 86 yr old mother my first thought was getting hot food/drinks into them and keeping as warm as possible.”
Sandra: “A few of us in our village had a problem in that once the power came on, the motors on the central heating burnt out meaning an extra 5 days without heat. Between power off and power on, heating systems broke down. We will be getting invoices for heating engineers and plumbers – took 3 visits.”
Alice: “I live in Ridsdale, had no power for 8 days along withrest of village . I’m lucky, I own a cafe in Hexham so ate there most nights. Obviously no receipts but as a family of 5 we used up stock from the business. How do we claim/prove that?”
Sylvia: “All well and good saying that now, however we were unable to access any information for 6 days so have no receipts “
Rebecca: We are a family of 4, power went off the Friday night of storm we had nothing until we got generators finally yesterday. Electricity still off now so Wi-fi is so I can’t work.
Our nearest family is 20 miles away so have been travelling back and forward for meals and warmth and to use Wi-fi. I work from home so internet was a necessity. Fuel we are using is getting ridiculous as husband works where we live so he needed to be here.
Kept getting calls saying would be on next day so didn’t see urgency at first and obviously didn’t know about receipts.
We have an autistic son and it has been incredibly unsettling for him and us. He was so upset when we got back Sunday to another dark and cold house he hates the house and wants to move (which we are going to now but that’s another issue with landlord not helping anyone either)
Our neighbour has had a stroke and is disabled and dependant on bed and chair and his wife has been besides herself. We all had no signal for ages so I was trying to get away from the house and ring whenever I could but advice I got from phone line was she would have to ring 999.
Liz: “Hi regarding your post about lack of power I’ve now been without power since the storm apparently due back on today fingers crossed so been without power heating or water for 10 days . No communication from power for first week and I had to ring them as I’m a frontline nurse and needed uniforms washed etc I’ve had to fork out over 500 pounds to keep my family safe warm and hydrated and now worrying how I’m going to afford Christmas food let alone presents .”
JT: “Just a reply to your post . Where to start .
A used nearly a month of logs in a week . I had to throw away a full freezer of food away . As well as 2 fridges full . Paid for 2 nights. In a hotel on the coldest nights . As it was -4 in my house . Paid for petrol to take my disabled children to South Yorkshire to stay with family as it was just 2 cold in house . Paid petrol their And petrol back as there was nowhere for me to stay . I lost all our tropical fish as the water in the tank froze . We never heard a thing from northern power or council . And as I’m a full time carer for my children I’m on benefits. So money was tight before this . But now I’m stressed as lets face it if it takes as long to be compensated as it did to get the power back it will be spring before we get any
[Mr Palmer notes: -Tim is not the only person who saw his Facebook comments curtailed or banned from commenting. I also experienced this]
Compensation needed now, in cash
It is customers’ statutory right to be compensated during power outages. The maximum amount legally required for this Guaranteed Standards payment is £700, but Northern Powergrid have agreed to waive that ceiling in the light of the long delay in restoring power after Storm Arwen. The problem is that the compensation IS NOT AVAILABLE NOW, and even when it arrives, it is normally paid in the form of a credit on electric bills, NOT IN THE FORM OF CASH that can be used for day to day survival.
Since statutory compensation is due to us by law, why cannot at least a portion of it — eg £500 per household — be made available now, in cash, so people can get through December?
In addition to the Guaranteed Standards Payment, Northern Powergem have also agreed to help with the cost of food, water, accommodation, kennels for pets, solid fuel, gas fuel, gas heaters, generator hire, and laundry. They say, “Please provide proof of purchase to this mailbox. We consider the circumstances on a case-by-case basis.”
We appreciate the offer, but there are some problems with this:
1- expenses are all very well but people need the money to spend before they can claim and we know that most of us have spent an entire month’s budget in a matter of days and some are facing considerable stress and hardship until payday or if and when compensation is paid.
2- receipts. How, exactly, are people to claim for burning coal.and firewood and butane that were purchased some time ago? People rarely buy coal and wood by the sack, they buy it in bulk for the winter or buy several bulk purchases throughout winter.
We bought 1/2 a tonne of coal 3 weeks ago. That would have lasted us until mid February, we have burned 3/4s of it plus many loads of firewood donated by a neighbour over the crisis. How do we claim for that?
3- there appears to be a fundamental lack of understanding around how rural budgets work. Diesel and petrol are by far the largest household expense. As a result we budget on how many trips we need to do into town, to the schools, to every facility or service that most urban people can walk to or get public transport. There is little or no public transport to many of our outlying communities. The crisis has completely thrown that budgeting. Let me explain. If you live remotely then you are probably using at least a tank of fuel a week, if you have a family, based on x number of trips perhaps more perhaps less. If you lived 5 miles from your nearest Community Center and were forced to head there 3 times a day to get hot food and warmth then you are driving an additional 30 miles a day, unbudgeted for. This means that that tank of fuel that lasts a week now lasts 3 days. Furthermore with one fuel station at Bellingham, between Hexham and Jedburgh, following the closure over the past 10 years even the act of buying fuel uses fuel.
Are NPG going to make allowances for additional travel expenses, taxis to community centres or food sources or the cost of fuel due to the increased essential travel?
4- Lastly, in refusing to countenance releasing even a portion of the compensation payment to households affected, NPG are essentially expecting us to carry the debt until that payment is made. People will be borrowing from banks, credit cards, families and friends and other sources, some decidedly less than advisable. Why should they carry this stress and burden especially in December?
Fancy being left for a week or two in an isolated farmhouse far from any shops, with no power for heat, lighting, phones or the internet, and outdoor/indoor temperatures never far from zero? That’s what happened to Charles Palmer, his family and many thousands of other households after Storm Arwen. It took Northern Powergrid over a week and in some cases nearly two to restore power, even with the (late) involvement of the MOD. Some properties have not yet had power restored. Hard to heat in the best of times, many homes have been the temperature of fridges.
Listen here as he describes the impact on household finances and the desperate financial situation some are now facing this December.
We are gathering reports from people who are struggling to survive in the absence of the compensation they are entitled to.
We need your help and support in getting the message out about the plight of those impacted. There has so far been only limited attention to this in Parliament. A full inquiry into the disastrous response by Northern Powergrid should lead to fundamental change — it should never happen again.
Old stone farmhouses and cottages are hard to insulate, although materials like hempcrete may make this easier in the future. Making these homes energy efficient and less dependent on fossil fuels is clearly an urgent matter, which cannot be solved by one-size-fits-all technical solutions.
In Mr Palmer’s rural upland area, most people are reliant on oil or LPG and coal or firewood. Oil and LPG must be bought in bulk — simply unaffordable for many families. Government regulations have imposed a switch to lower bitumen coal, which is supposed to be “greener” but Mr Palmer says it burns so badly that it keeps going out, bungs up the stoves with waste, and in any case you need far more of it so the carbon savings only exist on paper. As we’ve always said, if it doesn’t work – it isn’t green.
Meanwhile, electric power is essential for keeping the heating systems going, as well as for lighting, and often for pumping and filtering water from wells. And some, relatively few homes, now base their heating on heat pumps, which are totally dependent on electricity. The lack of back-up provision of generators or fuel in some new homes built with heat pumps, and the huge delay in getting power back up and running, has led to residents being evacuated with hypothermia during the prolonged power failure. If heat pumps are to be the key technology in transition to lower carbon homes, they need to be installed with attention to local realities and the changing climate, as well as the need for thoroughly well-insulated homes.
Unsurprisingly in this situation we are hearing anecdotal reports of deaths related to the incident and more are expected. There’s a statutory requirement for Northern Powergrid to compensate its customers, and Ofgem has lifted the usual ceiling of £700 for compensation, for present purposes. However, no one knows how or when these Guaranteed Service payments will be paid. In any case the money, when it arrives, will do nothing to ease the present crisis. Some people have used up a whole month’s budget in a week and are left without anything to buy more food or fuel, never mind the costs of the festive season. Some have been reliant on takeaway dinners, some have had to evacuate their homes and stay in hotels, and many have lost the whole contents of their freezers, normally kept well stocked for winter emergencies. Soup kitchens have had plenty of Christmas turkeys, to turn into pre-Christmas soup. But with little or no public transport in these areas, many people cannot easily reach soup kitchens, cannot afford the petrol or diesel to get to towns or even villages, and cannot leave their homes and abandon their animals. Some have been reached at home by a massive effort of volunteers and local businesses and services, but even where help has been offered it has often been far from adequate. Many people have also lost work hours, or have been forced to use up their holiday entitlement.
In a crisis like this, it is shocking that people have not been able to rely on their supplier to keep them safe. Mr Palmer reports that a local business installed a number of generators for isolated homes, but after some initial successful installations they then found they couldn’t get the necessary authorisation released by Northern Powergrid to purchase any more: apparently Northern Powergrid said they wanted to “bring the incident back into the business”. Were they afraid of reputational damage from not being able to do the job themselves, when they clearly had no capacity to do this? An email from FPA to Ofgem late on Sunday, 5 December saw Ofgem immediately emailing Northern Powergrid:
“For the avoidance of doubt, we expect network companies to make every effort to reconnect customers as soon as possible. This includes maximising the use of partner organisations to deliver support to customers, including gensets to reconnect domestic properties that are still without power. We do not have any requirement that all the work must be done by NPG themselves.”
As power returns to the hills and valleys, we are now asking Ofgem to ensure that an advance of the statutory compensation is paid now, in cash, so that people can get through December.
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.
At Fuel Poverty Action we are dealing with many situations of this kind where people are being left in the cold, or without hot water, again and again and sometimes for long periods. FPA are working with residents in several estates, but we are constantly being contacted by more, and we’re currently trying to work out the best way forward. In the meantime, some of the advice below may be useful to you. Please keep us posted!
It is hard to make progress because you have few legal rights. Legislation is due in 2022 but until then heat networks are unregulated, except for some limited legislation on metering and billing. And even when it comes in, it will not solve everything, especially as both heat providers and landlords often act as if they are simply above the law.
There are however some levers, and some success stories. We know of two places where residents have succeeded in getting their tariffs cut in half, one reported here, and for the other — watch this space! Heat networks CAN provide reliable and relatively sustainable heating, at a fair price, and no one should have to put up with the opposite!
Thehousing ombudsmancan and does take action on heat networks and complaint process failures. See their recent report on this here and the article in Inside Housing. In some situations you want the Energy Ombudsman instead, usually if your estate or development is a “registered participant” with the Heat Trust.
BEIS – the government’s department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which is promoting and supporting heat networks. The Heat network team there knows a lot about the problems and are actively engaged in trying to get solutions. Do contact them directly at [email protected] and copy in Fuel Poverty Action at [email protected]. They will help if they can, and will also use what information you provide to try to ensure that the legislation, when it finally comes out, is fit for purpose and takes account of the real problems you are having.
The Heat Trust. You can see if your estate belongs to this here (you need to scroll down). Not only the heat provider, but the particular heat network site needs to be part of this scheme for the Heat Trust Rules to apply. If your estate IS registered, then there are rules on compensation etc which are often ignored but can be enforced.
Naming and shaming. Some social landlords are concerned about their reputation (although many big housing associations now are just big developers who don’t seem to care about residents at all). Twitter campaigns can be effective as can media exposure (for a recent example see here; many other stories that don’t hit the national press, radio or tv, are regularly exposed by local papers. In London, the Standard is also worth trying. FPA gets requests for people who are ready to speak out about their situation (usually named, but sometimes it can be anonymous). If you’d like to be contacted for this, please let us know.
Some private companies, which includes many heat providers, are sensitive to their reputation for commercial reasons, and can also be approached through their shareholders.
Getting hold of any contracts between your landlord, the freeholder, management agents, heat providers, etc can be crucial — but not always easy to do! If a public body, like the council, is a party to any contracts they can be subject to Freedom of Information requests. If you’re launching a legal case, you can get hold of contracts. You can also look at what your landlord and heat provider says about themselves and commits to on their websites, and at how they promote your estate or development, and see if they are keeping to their image and their commitments. Compare and contrast!
Campaigning is always much more effective collectively. Do you have a tenants and residents association (TRA)? If not, in London you can contact London Tenants Federation for advice on how to form one. If you are in a Housing Association, you can also get help from SHAC. Many estates have both tenants and leaseholders; it is always useful to unite if you can, and at least work together if you can’t. The terms of heat agreements can be different for both, but you will be much stronger together, and each has some rights (eg to information) that the other doesn’t have. If forming a TRA is not possible at the moment, lots of people do very well with facebook groups – this can be a great beginning and may lead to a TRA which will have legal status and carry more weight.
Some MPs and councillors, and the council’s housing committee, will pick up your issues. They all should. They can sometimes get answers where you cannot, and can give your situation prominence. You can write to them directly and then copy them into all your correspondence with your landlord, estate managers, or heat providers.
There may be other local organisations that would be happy to help you put pressure on, where it is required. When lockdown ends, a little demonstration, for instance, could be effective in raising your profile. In the winter, FPA sometimes help organise “warm-ups” where people who can’t heat their own homes go into a public building or some relevant offices, speak out and keep warm there!
Obviously, if the council is your landlord, there are many other levers you can pull. Let us know and we’ll try to help you access them, and put you in touch with others who have been doing this, eg in Southwark.
The law. It is not an easy undertaking, but the Heat Trust website gives some information on rights for people on sites that are not registered with them, here. This gives useful links to Landlord and Tenant law, consumer law, rights to repair, and the Homes fit for Human Habitation Act. You may be dependent on some residents being eligible for legal aid. And even then, getting anything enforced is an uphill battle, but you know that! If you are considering taking legal action please let us know.
FPA’s website has a lot of information about high tariffs, standing charges, and frequent and/or prolonged outages of heat and hot water. For a good (terrible) example, see our report Not Fit for Purpose; for more examples and policy recommendations please see our various submissions to BEIS, the GLA, the CMA and others, here.
Please consider joining FPA’s network of active district heating residents — just drop us a line and we’ll put you on the mailing list, first off. You are welcome to use this list to keep us and others in a similar situation to yourself informed of your views and developments. Please also copy us into your correspondence with your landlord, heat provider, or estate management (preferably at the end of a thread, not as it goes along), but we will not necessarily be able to respond because…
FPA has NO FUNDING for this work, and in fact, currently, no funding at all. We are devoted volunteers but you can help make sure the work expands and continues by fundraising for us, joining Friends of FPA here, or just donating, here. You can also subscribe (free) to our newsletter and event notifications here.
Resources permitting, we are hoping to call a meeting of our District Heating users’ network in the spring, probably together with some people from BEIS. Do let us know if you’d like to be part of that, and if you’d be ready to help pull it together.
(update to that, they removed every comment and reply I tried to make about their lack of contact 
got time to play on Facebook but no time to actually contact people) 
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