National Day of Action – 6th March

On 6th March, FPA will join Unite Community, the National Pensioners Convention (NPC) and many more to Unite 4 Energy For All and protest the number of people suffering due to cold and damp homes.

On March 6th, the government will announce its Spring Budget, which will likely be the last budget before a general election. Throughout austerity, the COVID-19 pandemic and the ‘cost of living’ crisis, government’s policies have actively contributed to hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths. Join us to demand an end to deaths fuelled by poverty.

Events are being planned in:

  • Barnsley – Meet 12.00 at Tower Centre Precinct near Coffee Boy.
  • Birmingham – Meet 12.00 New Street Station.
  • Bristol – Meet 11.30 at Tony Benn House, Victoria St, BS1 6AY.
  • Exeter – Meet 13.00 at Exeter Central Train Station.
  • Glasgow (8th March) – Meet 12.00 at The Platform Cafe, Easterhouse.
  • Halifax – Meet 12.00 at Southgate, above Market.
  • Ipswich – Meet 11.00 outside Boots, Tavern Street.
  • Irvine (5th March) – Meet 12.30, Bridgegate.
  • Leeds – Meet 11.30 outside Leeds Bus Station (John Lewis End).
  • London – Meet 12.00 at College Green (Abingdon Street Gardens), SW1P 3SE.
  • Manchester – Meet 13.00 outside Boots, Market Street.
  • Newcastle – Meet 11.00 at Grey’s Monument.
  • Newport – Meet 12.00 John Frost Square outside Kingsway Centre, NP20 1ED.
  • Norwich (5th March) – Meet 11.00 outside the Market, Gentleman’s Walk.
  • Portsmouth – Meet 12.00 outside Civic Offices.
  • Sheffield – Meet 12.00 outside the Moor Market.
  • Southampton –   Meet 11.00 outside Poundland, Above Bar Shopping Precinct.
  • Swansea – Meet 11.00 outside Quadrant Shopping Centre.           

Contact [email protected] to connect with local groups.

Guest blog: Lambeth Tenants Heat Campaign

Lambeth Town Hall

LAMBETH RESIDENTS FACE EVICTION WHEN WE CAN’T PAY ENERGY BILLS

As seen on BBC Morning Live, 15th December 2024

This guest blog has 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. 

Lambeth Tenants Heat Campaign can be contacted at [email protected]

Go here to read it.

Still from Morning Live report

Join or organise a #WarmUp this December!

✊Click out our #WarmUp This Winter Action Pack for all the resources you need to take part on 1st and 2nd December.

🍄Go here to Register your Warm Up (or use the form below if you have an Action Network login)

📍Go here or see the map below to find your nearest local action.

🔥Use our guide on How to Organise a Warm Up.

💻 Email [email protected] to be connected with your local organisers!

#BanForcedPPMs #EnergyForAll #ColdHomesKill #EndWinterDeaths

Take action this winter!

FPA members with banner

As temperatures begin to drop this Autumn, our blood boils at facing another winter with the political choice of fuel poverty.

Both main political parties seem to accept that sky-high energy bills are the new reality.

Take Action

Help us to fight this government’s culture war against the just and green transition we all need. A green new deal that guarantees heat and light to everyone.

Order free #EnergyForAll stickers to put up in your local area. QR codes will guide more people to our events and trainings.

Register for training to organise or take part in #WarmUp protests all around the country in December. See the growing list of actions below!

Join our team and look out for announcements of more events and actions.

And share this post from TwitterInstagram and Facebook!

Tell Ofgem to scrap the standing charge

e4a and FPA logos

Ofgem are coming under pressure to end the unfair standing charge on energy bills, which now stands at £25 a month before we have used a single watt of energy.

Ofgem has agreed to think about it a bit more, and make an announcement “within weeks”, but they are not seeking advice from fuel poverty organisations.

Please use this form to send a letter to the CEO Jonathan Brearley and ask your MP to do the same, so Ofgem can be in no doubt that it’s time to get rid of the standing charge.

Thanks for taking action!

#EnergyForAll in Parliament

On July 4th, around 30 MPs from parties including Conservatives, Labour, SNP and Liberal Democrats attended our Energy For All Manifesto Parliamentary Launch.

12 new MPs signed the Manifesto there with more doing so since, bringing our total to over 25 MPs! Others have agreed to follow ups or meetings about elements of Energy For All or other fuel poverty issues we campaign on.

This event marked a huge first step towards broadening parliamentary support for an Energy Pricing Revolution. On the road to next year’s General Election, we will continue to lobby MPs and pressure parties to adopt these crucial measures to bring down bills for good.

On the eve of our parliamentary launch, we surpassed 200 signatures on the Manifesto. War on Want is the latest organisation to add it’s name to our list of supporters and watch 350.org‘s explainer video on why we need #EnergyForAll.

You can help build support for this demand at a grassroots level by taking a motion to your trade union branch.

Help us take our campaign to the next level. Donate now!

Energy For All Petition Hand In – October 19th

FPA are campaigning for Energy For All, a universal, free band of energy to pay for necessities of heating, lighting and cooking. Please join over 600,000 people in signing our petition supporting the demand and share far and wide. Sign up for updates and to get involved!

We will be taking our petition to Downing Street on Wednesday 19th October at 2.30pm. We will assemble at George V Statue, Old Palace Yard, at 1pm to hear speeches. We hope you can join us on the day!

Can’t be there in person? Support #EnergyForAll from home by sharing social media content and joining our digital action. See our toolkit.

A nice cup of tea 

On 26 May Rishi Sunak announced a £15 billion package of support for people struggling with energy bills, and although he didn’t dare say its name, a windfall tax on oil and gas companies’ current extraordinary profits.  

The windfall tax, called a temporary “Energy Profits Levy” was expected. The size of the support package was something of a surprise, a measure of the depth of the crisis the UK population is facing, and the depth of the crisis of the current government, which has, with impunity, partied while people die. The End Fuel Poverty Coalition, of which FPA is a member, has outlined numerous potholes in the distribution of these funds – operational issues for some renters, Prepayment Meter users, and others that could prevent some people from receiving what they are entitled to. We will be Below we focus on the amounts. 

The key offerings were:

£400 for every bill-payer and people on Prepayment Meters.

£650 each for the 8 million households surviving on welfare benefits, 

£300 for pensioner households, and

£150 for households who get non-means-tested disability benefits 

Many people can qualify for more than one, or even all of these sums. The chancellor has repeatedly claimed verbally that “most” people will get £1,200. The government’s website is more cautious: almost all of the eight million most vulnerable households across the UK will receive support of at least £1,200 this year. 

There was enough in the package to warrant considerable relief, and even joy at this new proof that, after all, the government can move when pushed. Some people have dared to hope that the fuel poverty crisis is solved now. But unfortunately that is very far from the case. Lasting progress will require structural changes to our homes, our energy supply and the pricing system – like Energy For All, which will guarantee that every home has enough energy, free, to meet its basic needs. Instead, the Chancellor’s handouts will enable some to eat today – and go hungry again tomorrow. Here’s the context:

  1. The starting point. The levels of poverty are now so high in this country that even sums that are high, for a giveaway only take the tip off the iceberg. The UK spends far less on pensions than other OECD countries. Over two million families last year were forced to turn to food banks, up 80% on five years ago, and in many of these homes parents were working two or even three jobs to try to get by. Missing meals and rationing heat to an hour or less a day, many have not dared to put a kettle on, let alone cook a hot meal. With UK homes the worst insulated in Europe many are paying over the odds to heat houses and flats that never really stay warm or even dry. In terms of fuel costs alone, £1200 more than cancels out the expected £800 increase next October, but doesn’t approach negating the £1,500 total with the increase this spring, let alone what could happen next January, with Ofgem’s accelerated increase timetable. We cannot forget that the £1500 is an average – it is more for people on prepayment meters, and much more for people in bad housing, forced to pay to heat the streets. And we can’t forget, either, that BEFORE these increases, even before the pandemic, 10,000 people in the UK died each winter from fuel poverty.  
  2. Aside from the increasing fuel prices, people are facing massive increases in food costs, clothing, housing costs, transportation, and also, by the government’s choice, NI increases and real-terms cuts in benefits. Benefits increased by 3.1% in April, with consumer price inflation at 9%. The Chancellor’s “generous” £650 for people on means tested benefits goes a bit over half way towards making up the £20 per week ripped last October from people on UC – and never even extended to people on legacy benefits. There’s an extra £150 for people on disability benefits that are NOT means tested, but they are also to lose access to the Warm Home Discount, worth £150.  
  3. Meanwhile, working age people who are not on any benefits will get £400, which doesn’t go far against a £1500 increase. Where does that leave people who were working 2 or 3 jobs but were still struggling to make ends meet before the need to find hundreds of pounds more to pay for energy? The Chancellor keeps saying that benefits will rise with inflation in the autumn – and inflation, he says confidently, will then fall (would he count on that if his own family were affected?) It’s true that in this very low waged economy many people in “good” jobs are also recipients of benefits. But that is by no means true of all. For the many one or two income households who earn just over the benefits threshold, there is a cliff edge to climb – they get only £400 and nothing more. Unlike a tax system that is graduated so people benefit from allowances in some proportion to what they need, your fate with the Chancellor’s helicopter money, as with so much else these days, depends on arbitrary cut off points, and luck. 
  4. The monies do nothing about the gross injustices built into the pricing system. Because of the recently hugely increased standing charge on bills, you pay more per unit if you use less energy than if you are wealthy and profligate. No matter how much you cut down you can’t avoid the standing charge, which now carries the burden of covering the costs of failed, poorly regulated, energy suppliers. In addition, people on prepayment meters – often forced to have one installed because they’ve fallen into debt  – pay more than people who can pay by Direct Debit. 
  5. The handouts, however welcome, are a one-off. They may of course be repeated if the government again finds itself under sufficient pressure. But the total insecurity of having to wait in hope of such an event will drive many to despair, with all the implications for mental illness, suicides, demotivation, and sad, hard, unnecessary decisions being made to give up hope of a home, a course, a holiday, a business plan, or even a child because people in this country just can’t count on anything.
  6. The handouts will go not only to people who need them but to people who are already very wealthy and do not by any stretch of the imagination need help with their bills. FPA’s planned “Energy for All” is also universal, but would be balanced by higher tariffs for people who are using far more energy than they need. The Government’s suggestion that individuals can ‘donate to charity’ in no way deals with the injustice of giving public money to people who may already be profiting from the crises that are pushing the rest of us to desperation. 

Meanwhile, how is this all funded, and what of the Windfall Tax? Well, a 25% levy on the extraordinary profits that energy companies are raking in from our bills is due to raise £5 billion of the £15 billion pounds being spent on returning cash to households. (Interesting that they can find the rest from somewhere.)  But at the same time, the Chancellor has promised these same companies that if they “invest in the UK” – and specifically in oil and gas – they will get back over 91p for every pound invested. In their own businesses, that is. Promised up to 2025, at £1.9 billion per year this has been estimated to give them £5.7 billion (no official figures available). The government is taking with one hand, then, and giving back generously, with the other – as a bribe to induce profit-sated multinational corporations to further drill for oil, pollute the air, water, land and sea, and destroy the climate that we all depend on. Rishi Sunak’s tax breaks could lead to more than £8bn worth of North Sea energy projects. 

In any case, a tax worth £5 billion from £13.4 to £13.6 billion of windfall profits, still leaves eight and a half billion pounds in the hands of these corporations. That money – unearned, and created by the extra high prices we have paid – will go to people so obscenely wealthy that they don’t know what to do with it, and to further destruction of planet earth. Yet that money could have made a huge difference to our bills and our health. Just £3 billion could insulate over 2 million homes.

All this on top of the ongoing enforced generosity of the British taxpayer who gives more in subsidies to the likes of BP and Shell than we take from them in taxes. In normal times the UK government taxes oil and gas producers 40% on profits from North Sea extraction. This is the lowest government tax take in the world from an offshore oil and gas regime.  Even with this temporary levy, the tax rate on oil and gas companies in the UK will still be lower than the global average. 

Out of sight of the headlines, then, the champagne corks were no doubt popping in corporate boardrooms where billionaire CEOs weighed up the Chancellor’s statement. In millions of kitchens, meanwhile, their customers splurged by finally turning the kettle on and making a nice cup of tea.

Heat and Light are Basic Rights: Energy Customers Need the Same Rights and Protections as Domestic Water Customers and We Need it Now

Fran Lobel

The current energy crisis means that millions of households will not be able to afford their energy bills or costs and will be plunged into fuel poverty. The sharpest end of fuel poverty is ‘fuel crisis’ whereby households who use prepayment meters ‘self-disconnect’ from their supply when they can’t top-up. Customers with prepayment meters pay for their energy use in advance, usually by taking a key or card device to a local shop, buying credit which is loaded to the device, and then topping up the meter with credit. When all credit is exhausted the lights go out and the heat cuts off. ‘Self-disconnection’ is the commonly understood term for when this happens, although its use is contentious due to the implication that it’s an outcome customers choose.

Self-disconnection: the sharpest end of fuel poverty

Energy suppliers’ too-common recourse to recuperating debt is to pressure customers to switch to a payment method that might not be suitable, safe or practical, without exploring alternative methods of repayment. Energy suppliers also remotely ‘mode-switch’ indebted smart metered customers to prepayment mode without adequate warning and safety and practicability checks. As a final measure, suppliers forcibly install prepayment meters under warrant where (often frightened, vulnerable customers, unsure of their rights) fail to engage with debt collection processes. 

 We have particular concerns about the effects of chronic self-disconnection on prepayment energy customers. We are also deeply concerned that energy suppliers will recuperate problem debt resulting from unprecedented price rises by forcibly installing large numbers of prepayment meters. Self-disconnection is a fate that awaits hundreds of thousands more customers who won’t be able to afford their monthly or quarterly bills.

Energy is required to support and participate in life

Domestic water utilities customers have been protected from loss-of supply due to unaffordability and debt since 1999. The use of ‘limiting devices’ i.e. trickle valves as a sanction and coercive means of debt recovery was also prohibited under the same legislation.

During the 1994 2nd reading of the Water Domestic Disconnections bill, the point was made that water is unique as an essential to life commodity as it has no substitute. By contrast, it was suggested customers disconnected from their energy supply could manage for a few days using a calor gas heater or a primus stove. 

 It’s hard now, nearly three decades later, to imagine this being considered usable advice for off-supply energy customers. Calor gas heaters and primus stoves are no longer common back-of cupboard items stashed for an emergency or a camping trip, and customers who can’t afford small cash top-ups are not in a position to peruse the Argos catalogue as an interim solution to staying adequately warm. There never has been a safe or adequate substitute for electricity; it’s always been unsafe for those who need to keep medicine in the fridge or rely on power for medical or mobility equipment to lose supply. More generally and aside from providing safe and reliable light, electricity is now essential for the phone and online connectivity required for children’s homework, study, working from home, job search, accessing medical services, advice and support services, financial inclusion, and maintaining a universal credit account. As fewer households have a landline phone, ironically, it is now usually a requirement to use a mobile phone or other chargeable device and to maintain a Wi-Fi or data allowance to access emergency support from energy suppliers.

Comparisons, in recent decades, between the essentialness of domestic water and energy supplies have eroded beyond the point of useful and meaningful distinction. 

Water prepayment meters were banned in 1998.

Water prepayment meters, known as ‘Budget Payment Units’ (BPUs) were outlawed in 1998 after a consortium of six local authorities brought a successful legal challenge to the installation and use of BPUs to The High Court. The local authorities argued that customers with BPUs were likely to suffer more frequent disconnections from their water supply than customers without, and this could lead to the spread of infectious diseases. 

The High Court ruled that multiple statutory safeguards in place to protect customers from disconnection were bypassed by the use of BPUs. The same principle and outcomes apply to energy customers who self-disconnect. It’s clear that energy customers now need parity of protection with water utilities customers from all kinds of disconnection, including self-disconnection. 

Too often not safe, not practical, & sometimes lethal

We have noted that energy suppliers are routinely non-compliant with safety and practicability rules regarding prepayment; this means that householders who take life-sustaining medication that requires refrigeration and those who use mobility aids and medical devices that rely on power face life-threatening situations. Self-disconnection is also dangerous for those who are elderly or very young, or have health conditions worsened by cold. We have noted that forced installations of prepayment meters are executed without regard to safety and practicability regulations.

Widespread destitution: from consumer debt problem to a public health crisis

More broadly, frequent self-disconnection leads to destitution and perpetuates inter-generational disadvantage. It means that families are unable to cook food supplied to them from food banks; a month’s supply of frozen food is spoiled and lost; parents can’t log into Universal Credit accounts, miss messages, and then get sanctioned; adults go to work and job interviews without being able to have a shower; children can’t do their homework after school (and boil kettles to bathe in the mornings before school).  

It is true that energy customers are now only very rarely disconnected from their supply due to debt, but this ‘good news’ message is misleading. Energy suppliers don’t disconnect indebted energy customers because this no longer a necessary sanction; suppliers use warrants and rights of entry legislation, originally established in order to disconnect customers, to install prepayment meters and let householders self-disconnect from their supply. (Alan Murdie, the long-time editor of The Fuel Rights Handbook has questioned the lawfulness of re-purposing this legislation to forcibly install a different payment method device.)

 If actioned widely in response to large numbers of customers defaulting on unaffordable bills, this practice threatens to turn a consumer debt problem into a into a public health crisis. 

The prohibition that came into force in 1999 on disconnecting households from their domestic water supply was made as a paradigm-shifting public health measure. Indebted domestic water utilities customers can face legal and other debt enforcement action, but measures that threaten life, health, and cause severe detriment to all members, including children and infants, of an indebted household are rightly prohibited.

The energy regulator considered a prohibition on all disconnections as an option in the future should this be required…….

The energy regulator consulted from 2018-2020 on improving outcomes for consumers who experience self-disconnection and self-rationing, and regulations designed to protect prepayment consumers from the kind of detriments outlined above came into force in December 2020. We have noted that energy supplier compliance with these regulations is poor and none have faced enforcement action as a result. 

  In August 2019, during the pre-statutory phase of its consultation to improve outcomes for consumers who experience self-disconnection, Ofgem noted the following: 

We note that there is currently no obligation on regulated companies which prohibits gas and electricity disconnections on all meter types, except in certain circumstances and for particular customer groups. Disconnection due to debt should only be considered as a very last resort by suppliers and disconnections due to debt are now very infrequent. At this stage, we are not proposing to introduce a prohibition on all disconnections, similar to one in the water sector, but we will consider this as one option in the future should this be required

The above was given serious consideration before the pandemic; energy customers have since been hit concurrently and consecutively with the effects of the pandemic, disruption and additional costs associated with multiple supplier failures, and, now, unprecedented price rises. The ‘future’ referred to above should be considered now and the option is indeed required.

Measures required now and an end to forced installations of prepayment meters

  • As an immediate-term measure, energy supplier licence conditions intended to protect householders from disproportionately aggressive debt collection tactics should be robustly enforced, if breached.
  •  Energy suppliers are quick to recommend prepayment meters to indebted customers as a means of helping the household to budget. Where chronic unaffordability is the underlying issue, the prepayment meter is used to self-ration rather than budget and self-disconnection is inevitable. Licence conditions that compel energy suppliers to consider the customer’s individual circumstances and ability to pay should be robustly enforced, if breached.
  • Energy suppliers should also be compelled to proactively review their prepayment customer base to check if prepayment is safe and practicable for new and existing customers and follow through with the required actions.
  • Energy customers are currently protected by a prohibition on installation of prepayment meters under warrant where the installation would traumatise the householder due to their mental incapacity and/or psychological state. We hold the view that any practice brutal to a degree to traumatise any customer groups, in any circumstances, should be prohibited and call for the practice to be prohibited altogether. 

What would a prohibition on self-disconnection look like? 

Some lateral thinking and ingenuity would be required. The water sector avoided the scale of this regulatory and technical would-be dilemma as only a relatively small number (around 21,000) water prepayment meters had been installed before the prohibition came into force.  It’s timely to consider the technical issues in relation to the spectacular take-off of FPA’s #EnergyForAll petition which accrued 240,000 signatures within days of being launched and is still gathering pace at just over 400,000 (at time of writing). 

If implemented, #EnergyForAll would ameliorate the worst problems currently faced by prepayment customers and would prevent this payment method being enforced upon indebted credit-billing customers.  As things are, prepayment customers could still be at risk of self-disconnection if they exceeded their allowance. This would mean that energy customers most likely to be low-income and have other vulnerabilities would not benefit from the protection of energy as a right in the way that credit-billing customers (far less likely to be low-income and vulnerable) would benefit. 

But technical problems have technical solutions which can be found if the right to energy as an essential-to-life and basic right is understood and implemented as a matter of urgency.

Since 1999, water companies have remained in profitable private ownership, despite predictions at the time that the removal of disconnection as a sanction would lead to ruinous levels of bad debt. Water Utilities companies have learned to engage with indebted customers and recover debt using a variety of methods including legal action, but excluding brutality. 

Energy customers need parity of protection, now more than ever. Consumer debt should never lead to destitution. 

We can’t be disconnected from water – why is it still ok for heat and light?

Fran Lobel has worked with Repowering London as an energy advisor and advocate and continues to work on energy and utilities affordability and energy rights issues. She has a particular interest in rights and protections for prepayment customers.