Climate Justice Collective, a grassroots network of UK groups and individuals set up to support and take action against the root causes of climate change and for a clean, affordable and democratic energy system, have formed a Fuel Poverty Action campaign group.
Fuel Poverty Action (www.fuelpovertyaction.org.uk) are a campaign group that aims to support communities that are struggling with rising energy bills, to expose and undermine the way that the Big Six energy companies and the government are colluding to prioritise private profits and welfare cuts over our rights to warm homes, and to help work towards a community-controlled renewable energy system that provides democratic, green and affordable energy.
Disabled people are at particular risk of fuel poverty. Government figures published last year showed that 2.75 million households living in fuel poverty were classed as “vulnerable” under a definition of vulnerable which could include an older person, a child or a disabled person within the household. Fuel poverty disproportionately affects disabled people: disabled people spend a greater proportion of their income on fuel because they are less likely to be employed and they also face additional costs of services, such as social care or mobility aids; through having less opportunities to be in employment disabled people spend a greater proportion of their time at home whilst cold environments can aggravate impairments, exacerbate respiratory problems and increase stress. The double suicide in November last year of disabled couple Mark and Helen Mullins was linked to fuel poverty as without income for heating the pair were forced to live in just one room of their home under increasingly worsening conditions. Fuel poverty affects the poorest; often the poorer you are the higher the fuel prices people tend to be as a result of unscrupulous landlords hiking up meter prices for personal profit.
Our energy is controlled by six giant companies: Centrica (British Gas), EON, EDF, NPower, SSE and Scottish Power. The Big Six decide how our energy is produced and priced. We don’t have a say. ¼ of UK households froze in fuel poverty last winter. But the Big Six’s profits soared to a five year record high. The government is in the pocket of the Big Six. They’re making the bills bite harder with brutal welfare cuts. Our energy system is driven by private profit at all costs. It’s killing millions through fuel poverty and climate change.
The Big Six and the government want to keep things this way. We say: things have to change.
For more information go to www.fuelpoverty.org.uk
“Revealed: The figures that show just how badly rising energy bills have ravaged household budgets over the last decade”
https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-2571969/ONS-data-shows-true-impact-rising-bills-household-budgets.html