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MSE News: One million more in fuel poverty

Former_MSE_Guy
Posts: 1,650 Forumite



in Energy
This is the discussion thread for the following MSE News Story:
"Rising gas and electricity prices pushed another million households into fuel poverty, government figures show..."
"Rising gas and electricity prices pushed another million households into fuel poverty, government figures show..."
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Comments
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My opinion is that this is a BBC non news item pushed into the headlines. The definition of fuel poverty needs to be uplifted to 20% of income rather than 10%. For example SSE require you to spend 20% of net household income to benefit from their social tariff energyplus Care.
The death of social tariffs is recognised by its absence from the BBC report with the replacement Warm Home Discount giving 10% off only to pensioners. Everyone else must use less.
It was unwise to quote the director of Energyhelpline.com as his website doesn't even have social tariffs in any part or the comparison process.0 -
So what figures are used to state that Rising gas and electricity prices pushed another million households into fuel poverty?,
I use approx 4200 kWh of electricity and 19,000 kWh of gas a year but I only use 12,430 kWh of gas, now costing me £466, a year, for heating.
The other 6570 kWh of gas is hot water and cooking
Or do they use my total usage for the year, which is now £13250 -
Its a nice means of bashing energy companies (and I'm not saying they don't deserve it) but on the face of its its similar dodgy statistics to the child poverty ones (which define poverty as a % of average incomes thereby effectively making it impossible to erradicate unless you have a communist state!).
In the same way here - my parents for example have paid off their mortgage and live comfortably on their pension incomes because they only have to find money for food and bills. Consequently each of those items will represent a bigger proportion of their income than their next door neighbours consuming exactly the same amount but who are say still earning enough in addition to pay a mortgage or rent. Someone on benefits for example who gets very little cash but has all their housing paid for, is certainly going to find fuel a higher percentage of their overall income than their neighbours who earn enough to pay their rent from earnings.
At the very least it should be redefined as income after tax and housing costs, and then start looking at say 20% as being the potential danger flag.Adventure before Dementia!0
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