Fuel Poverty Action and DPAC condemn Ofgem’s abusive standing charge policies

 

Fuel Poverty Action and Disabled People Against Cuts have together written to Ofgem CEO Jonathan Brierley about the gross injustice of the present standing charges, including loading the cost of failed suppliers onto this part of people’s bills. [1] They say   "It is appalling that yet again Ofgem is punishing low income customers for its own failed regulation and the upside down priorities of the energy industry. …This is consistent with the blinkered approach that has led you to give “too much benefit to companies at the expense of consumers”, in the words of Christine Farnish, the Ofgem director who resigned last week.   Ofgem has claimed (2) that high standing charges are the only way to protect high users, some of whom are people with health needs for electricity, eg for electrical medical equipment. But the two groups suggest that Ofgem’s obligation to vulnerable customers is being abused as an excuse for policies that impoverish and endanger thousands of people, including many who are disabled people. They name instead several alternative ways to protect people with high energy needs - without impoverishing vast numbers of low income customers.   With Fuel Poverty Action’s proposal of Energy For All (e4a) each household would be entitled, free, to enough energy to cover basic needs, but people would pay a higher tariff for what they use above that amount. This would offer much needed security to all - including those who need more because of their health, disabilities, housing conditions, or family size. It would be paid for by the higher per-unit tariff on excess use, by windfall taxes and by ending the millions of pounds now poured daily into fossil fuel subsidies.   Other options listed include extensions of the Warm Home Discount, social tariffs, better disability benefits, and good safe insulation for vulnerable customers. And they say that companies that cannot fulfil their purpose of providing the energy people need at a cost they can afford, could - and must - be brought back into public hands.   Ruth London from FPA comments,   Instead of looking at real, proportionate, workable changes to the current upside down pricing framework, Ofgem has chosen to continue hitting low income users harder than affluent neighbours. The standing charge means that however much they cut down their usage many people will never be able to pay their bills.   Paula Peters of DPAC says,   I’m a low energy user because I am terrified to switch it on and worrying about costs all the time. It’s making me permanently anxious as it is all of us. Last winter I was in a lot of pain with a cold house. I needed NHS intervention: a steroid injection and a Nebuliser at A & E.   [1] https://www.fuelpovertyaction.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Letter-to-Ofgem-re-decision-on-Standing-Charge-August-2022.pdf [2] https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/publications/follow-our-review-arrangements-recovering-costs-supplier-failure

Fuel Poverty Action: 75% of those polled support the right to free energy to meet basic needs

 From Fuel Poverty Action

 

The present energy pricing system is leaving thousands each year to die of cold  and despite a government hand-out millions are in fear of next winter.

 

Fuel Poverty Action has long been advocating a free band of energy to every household to cover basic needs like keeping the lights on, keeping warm, and running a fridge. This would be paid for by higher prices for people who use more than they need, by windfall taxes  while prices and profits are so high, and by a permanent end to the subsidies paid to fossil fuel corporations, now worth billions of pounds.

 

This plan has the support of over 400,000 signatories on a change.org petition.  

 

And now nationwide polling has found that three quarters of the population support the right to free energy to meet people’s basic needs.  Only 10% opposed it. The poll was conducted by ICM, with a representative sample of 2000 British adults,10th - 12th  June 2022.

 

An even higher number – 81% – support abolition of the standing charge – the daily charge of around 44p per day on every customer’s energy bill, which must be paid regardless of how much you use.  Only 8% want this charge to stay.  

 

FPA have written to Ofgem about the way the costs of failing suppliers have been loaded onto the standing charge - the part of the bill that nobody can avoid - which FPA says is a “grotesque injustice”. 

 

Fuel Poverty Action’s Ruth London says,

 

The standing charge is even higher in some parts of the country, and it mounts up frighteningly quickly.  People on prepayment meters are often forced to find money to pay this charge before they can even turn the lights on. People who cut their use down to the bone in a bedsit end up paying more per unit of energy than those who are heating a mansion.

 

Energy For All would reverse this perverse system that incentivises waste and clobbers the people who can least afford it. It would finally give energy security where we most need it - at home. And it would press the government to finally fix the UK’s notoriously badly insulated housing and turn to cheaper, more sustainable sources of energy, like solar power and wind.

 

 

 

Advice for those struggling with energy & utility bills - Brent Civic Centre Friday December 3rd 10am-3pm

 

SIGN THE PETITION HERE

Holding feet to the fire: Peabody tenants confront unaccountable heating and housing management

Tenants of some local  'Build to Rent' schemes have found themselves trapped in the freeholder's contracts with utility and broadband suppliers, with no ability to switch accounts.  Fuel Poverty Action reveal similar problems in a new build development in Tower Hamlets.

Fuel Poverty Action is today publishing a remarkable exposé showing how families have been left in the cold because their unaffordable heat network and their social housing tenancies have created a legal limbo. For their heating, they are tied to one supplier, but they have no control of prices, no contract, no legal rights, and no one to complain to. This crisis has been created by a toxic - but increasingly common - mix of unaccountable housing and unaccountable heating. The tenants have led a long fight for affordable warmth and against the odds, have won major price reductions.  

Phoenix Works is a new build development in Tower Hamlets with 28 ”affordable rent” tenants housed by Peabody housing association(1). When they moved in, tenants “couldn’t believe” what their prepayment meters were consuming. Many simply could not pay the up to £250 a month required to keep warm. Some had to move out and stay with relatives, some got ill, some went deeply into debt. Meanwhile their landlord and heat provider passed the buck to each other, displaying a sense of impunity, and dazzling incompetence. 

The tenants’ heat is provided by a “Heat Network”. Heat networks are like central heating for a whole estate, and are being heavily promoted and subsidised by the government on the grounds that they offer a low-carbon alternative(2). Customers of a Heat Network cannot switch, nor is there any price cap or, as yet, any regulation. Assessed as eligible for “affordable housing”, the ex-council tenants had no warning of the extra costs, and no heat contract. They could not even find out who was responsible for their heating and tariffs: the estate management, KFH, or their social landlord, Peabody?  

Ms Lewis, who has led the fight for affordable heating at Phoenix Works says,

“Peabody can’t escape responsibility for allowing tenants to suffer. Some have had to choose between heating homes and feeding families during winter months, all because of the lack of information and accountability from the very beginning.  Do we have to just put up and shut up with whatever charges KFH decide to throw at us?  We would never have chosen to live this way had we been given the choice.”

Ruth London from FPA says, 

“Cold kills. 10,000 people die each winter in the UK because they can’t afford to heat their homes.  And that was the number before a respiratory pandemic! 

Heat Networks are supposed to provide low carbon, low cost, reliable heat. But FPA work with residents in many such estates who are fighting huge bills, constant heating breakdowns, or both.The sheer unaccountability of both heating and housing management has never been more blatant than at Phoenix Works.” 

With Fuel Poverty Action(3), tenants are calling for a public inquiry to uncover what has happened and what structural and legal changes are needed to prevent it happening anywhere again. 

Tenants from Phoenix Works are available for interview.  Also available are residents from other heat network estates in Tower Hamlets and all over London who are suffering from high prices or frequent outages, both of which can leave households without either heat or hot water.  

As well as Fuel Poverty Action, the Phoenix Works tenants have won support from SHAC, who contributed to the dossier, from the Heat Networks team at BEIS  (heatnetworks@beis.gov.uk), and from their MP, Apsana Begum. 

The Dossier is published HERE on our website or you can download a PDF here. 

For substantial coverage in The Times see HERE.

NOTES 

1. New developments are required to set aside a proportion of flats for “affordable housing”. Rents in these lower standard apartments are up to 80% of market rates, which in some places, like London, can be extremely high, and tenants may face lower standards and “poor doors”. Most of the other residents are leaseholders. 

2. Heat networks pipe heat into homes from a communal gas boiler. Also known as “District Heating”, this system are said to save carbon emissions by being more efficient than gas boilers, by producing electricity at the same time as heat if using a central “Combined Heat and Power” boiler, and because they have the potential to use renewable or waste heat sources instead of combustion. But where systems are badly designed, installed, or maintained, residents can go cold, and carbon savings in practice can be nil. 

3. Fuel Poverty Action is a grassroots organisation started in 2011, which since 2017 has been supporting residents all over London who are organising for reliable and affordable heat from their heat networks. In 2017 we published Not Fit For Purpose, a report on the heat network on Myatts Field North, which is now being pressed into service again by residents there. Our many consultation responses on the issue can be found here.

 

NEVER AGAIN! Social & private tenants demand immediate recladding of flammable homes & protection from fire and cold

An Open Letter to James Brokenshire, signed by over 100 organisations, MPs, councillors, architects and other relevant experts, and by residents of blocks affected by this national disaster, will be delivered with a demonstration at Ministry for Housing Communities and Local Government between 1 and 2 pm on 17 October.  The letter will demand immediate recladding of flammable homes, and that residents must be kept safe both from fire and from cold, until this work is completed. During the re-cladding process tower blocks can be left freezing without cladding and insulation for months or even years.  

The letter will be delivered by tower block residents from both social housing and private blocks, including residents of social housing blocks in Salford that have been denied access to government funding. 

They will be supported on the day by Fuel Poverty Action, who initiated the Open Letter and organised this Day of Action,and by members of the Grenfell community, trade unionists, housing organisations, and many others who fear more deaths this winter.

Demonstrators will then go on to an event at the House of Commons from 3 - 5 pm hosted by Grenfell MP Emma Dent Coad.

Also part of the Day of Action are a solidarity demonstration outside the UK embassy in Brussels, organised by the Right to Energy Coalition, and a public meeting organised Southwark Group of Tenants Organisations focusing on how residents’ organisations are being bypassed and disempowered, even as everyone acknowledges that residents’ voices are key to keeping buildings safe.   

Ruth London from Fuel Poverty Action says:

No one can claim that tower block residents are responsible for the cladding on their buildings, yet they are the ones who are paying for this disaster in UK housing, with their health, with their food money or savings, and with their lives.  No wonder so many people are saying ‘No - never again! No more deaths from fire, no more deaths from cold!.’ The pressure on the Secretary of State will only increase until the government fulfills its promise to keep people safe in the homes where they live and put their children to sleep.  

Matt Wrack, of the Fire Brigades Union has supported this initiative:  

The Fire Brigades Union called for a universal ban on these flammable materials. Many firefighters and residents of high rise residential buildings wanted more comprehensive action taken against flammable cladding.  Flammable cladding needs to be removed and banned. But it also needs to be replaced before winter. If insulation is removed without being replaced, some of the most vulnerable members of our society will be left freezing, in poor health or in poverty due to extortionate heating bills.  That’s why this Open Letter is so crucial.

Elizabeth Okpo from Spruce Court in Salford says:

We still have the cladding on our building and other issues just the same as Grenfell Tower and we are living in terror.  I look at the children in our block, and I can’t bear to think of what could happen.  I go to bed with a bible, and wake up thanking God I am still alive.  They have only taken the cladding off the bottom three floors, and on those floors people were freezing last winter because there was no insulation.

The Open Letter can be seen online here; the final list of signatories will be available on Tuesday 16 October.  

No More Deaths from Fuel Poverty: Energy Rights Now!

A message from Fuel Poverty Action

On Friday November 28th,  the day the government reveals how many people died last year from the effects of fuel poverty, join Fuel Poverty Action and Reclaim the Power to demand 'No More Deaths from Fuel Poverty: Energy Rights Now!’

We'll be meeting outside the Institute of Directors, 116  Pall Mall at 11.30am before marching to Energy UK - the body who represent and defend the Big Six profiteers, for an inclusive and creative action.

The day will end with a tutorial on knowing your energy rights and how protecting yourself and your community from energy companies.

In 2012/2013 10,000 people died from fuel poverty, including thousands of people in London, and we are likely to learn that thousands more died last winter.

At the same time the Big Six energy companies made £3.7bn in profit – this is equal to £370,000 profit for every person who died.

Join us to express sadness, anger and solidarity with those who have suffered; and to point the finger at those responsible. We will end the day by empowering one another to fight for energy rights and energy justice.

We need affordable, sustainable and publicly and community owned energy. We don't need greedy profiteers represented by Energy UK.

If you have mobility needs, would like a buddy for the day or would like to enquire about us possibly subsidizing your travel fare for the day, please get in touch by email: fuelpovertyaction@gmail.com

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