FUEL POVERTY IS STILL WITH US

We carried out a series of analyses of fuel poverty during the cost-of-living crisis, and also explored the potential impact of social tariffs. Since then, fuel prices have fallen, but they are still above pre-crisis levels, they increased in the last two quarters of 2024/25 and will increase again in the first quarter of 2025/26 by 6.4 per cent. At the same time, all mitigations have ended and the winter fuel allowance for pensioners has been restricted to pensioners on Pension Credit. This paper presents a revised analysis of who will be affected by fuel poverty in January 2025, based on analysis of the ONS Living Costs and Food Survey. We use a threshold of households spending more than 10 and 20 per cent of their net income after housing costs on fuel. The analysis describes their characteristics, fuel poverty rates, and fuel poverty gaps. We find that although there is a clear association between fuel poverty and net income, with fuel poverty concentrated in the lower-income deciles, some richer households also spend more than 20 per cent of their income on fuel, and 26.3% of households in fuel poverty are not income poor. Childless couples and couple pensioner households are less likely than average to be fuel poor, and couples with two or more children and lone parent households are more likely to be fuel poor.