Fuel Poverty Action’s history told through a selection of events and milestones, from our activist beginnings in 2011 to where we are today.
2011
As austerity policies were starting to hit hard, a group of campers at the final Camp for Climate Action (‘Climate Camp’) decided to start fighting poverty and climate change together by attacking the fossil fuel-based, profit-driven energy market. Plans were hatched at camp fires and in polytunnels at Grow Heathrow, where villagers and activists met to oppose the expansion of the airport.
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2012
Our first Warm-Ups take place around the UK, on the principle that if we can’t afford to heat our homes we have the right to go into buildings together – like libraries, shopping centres and banks – and publicly make ourselves comfortable there. In Whitehall, with members of Disabled People Against Cuts and Greater London Pensioners Associations, we stop traffic for two hours outside the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
2013
Our sights are on the Big Six energy companies, their profits and CEO bonuses. A handful of campaigners, mostly very young, concentrate public fury through a series of actions. These are all over the media and put the profiteers on the back foot.
2014
Our Energy Bill of Rights launch in the House of Commons is packed out and vibrant with on-the-ground testimonies. The Energy Bill is also popular at our community coffee mornings, along with a Miniguide to Your Rights in dealing with energy suppliers. Single mothers, asylum seekers, pensioners and disabled people – hardest hit by rising gas prices – form the core of our protests.
2015
Our first involvement with heat networks, supporting North Lambeth council tenants to defend their communal ‘district heating’. Ever since then we’ve been working with residents whose heat networks are dysfunctional and unaffordable, bringing estates together to press for legislation and build media attention. In 2021 the government finally announced it would regulate this monopoly industry, starting in 2025.
2017
We visit Ofgem with our allies, bringing a tiny ‘cap’ to protest against their weak and meaningless price cap. On 14th June, Grenfell Tower succumbs to its flammable insulation and the authorities’ refusal to listen to their residents. 72 people die and the whole nation is shocked and determined to see change.
2018
As tower blocks around the country have their dangerous cladding removed (by the same companies guilty of applying it), they are left exposed to cold and heat. We organise a campaign for Safe Cladding and Insulation Now (SCIN) and deliver an open letter to the Secretary of State signed by over 140 organisations, MPs, councillors and union bodies.
2019
Continuing years of support for local protests against fracking, we help stop the trucks at Horse Hill in Surrey – later the site of a historic and significant victory in court that has repercussions for all fossil fuel enterprises. Fracking itself was banned in 2019.
2020
Making Green Come True brings technical retrofit experts together with residents of different kinds of housing whose homes and lives have been wrecked by botched energy efficiency ‘improvements’. Councils start calling on us to help bring residents’ perspectives into their Net Zero planning.
Meanwhile, the Yellow Vests movement brings France to a halt and forces everyone to look again at who will pay for the transition to a sustainable economy? In a small arts centre in South London we ask ourselves: couldn’t energy for basic needs be free, and luxury use cost more? The idea for Energy For All (e4a) is tested among pensioners and tenants associations and at conferences in the UK and Europe.
2022
The e4a petition takes off like a rocket and is delivered to Downing Street with over 650,000 signatures. We help our staunchest MP supporter, Clive Lewis, with a Private Members Bill and an Early Day Motion on e4a.
2023
Lots of new starts, including our monthly online learning series Fuel For Thought, the Lambeth Tenants Heat Campaign, a local FPA hub in Glasgow, and Unite for Energy For All, within Unite the Union. Several MPs, union leaders and a wide range of grassroots organisations speak at the online launch of the e4a Manifesto, and 30 cross-party MPs attend the in-person Parliamentary launch. Our biggest winter mobilisation yet sees over 30 events across the country, and more relentless campaigning against forced PPM installations.
2024
We continue to campaign to scrap the standing charge on energy bills and spearhead more days of action against fuel poverty. The announcement that pensioners’ Winter Fuel Payments will now be means-tested causes a mass revolt against the Labour Party leadership, and we join allies across the country protesting that in this wealthy country there is plenty of money – it’s just going into the wrong hands.
Workers for Energy For All is launched and we hold our first fringe meeting at TUC congress. Over 60 MPs attend our Parliamentary reception, building support for e4a.
We are all entitled to energy for heating, washing, lighting, cooking, connectivity, and medical needs. Let’s get the money back from the fossil fuel giants who are profiting from our unpayable bills!