Posts

Posted on

Press Release: TUC backs a free band of energy

TUC  backs demand for free energy to cover basic needs. 

The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has come out in favour of a free band of energy, paid for by higher tariffs for “profligate” energy users!

The energy prices being forecast for this autumn are simply unpayable. They would cause debt, hunger, and even more thousands than usual dying of cold this winter.  But as a new report from the TUC points out, this deadly predicament facing UK households is “not inevitable”.  

Ruth London from Fuel Poverty Action says, “We agree with the TUC –: State handouts and tweaking the system are no solution to a disaster on this scale. Fundamental changes are necessary, and urgent. Competition in the energy market has not worked –- it has been a disaster.  Energy is a right. It should be in public hands and distributed fairly, to warm, safe, well insulated homes”.  

The Trade Union Congress (TUC) has for the first time backed Fuel Poverty Action’s demand for  a free band of energy to every household to cover basic lighting, heating and cooking needs like keeping the lights on, keeping warm, and running a fridge. This would be paid for by charging for energy used beyond a certain high-usage threshold at a significantly higher rate, so that very profligate energy users pay more per unit. (1)

Fuel Poverty Action say further funds should come from windfall taxes and an end to the millions of pounds of public money now spent every day on subsidising gas and oil.  That would ensure that everyone would have enough for their needs, taking account of housing conditions and their health and age. 

This demand has been gathering support at a speed that no one expected.  Our petition has 407,000 signatures.  In a nationwide ICM poll,  75% of the population supported a free band of energy, with only 10% opposed.  

The silence from the government poses a question: “What are they waiting for?”  

ENDS

For media enquires please contact:

  1. Full report here: https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-07/Public%20energy%20public%20paper%20-%20web.pdf
  2. Executive Summary: https://www.tuc.org.uk/research-analysis/reports/fairer-energy-system-families-and-climate
  3. Energy Live News: https://www.energylivenews.com/2022/07/25/government-faces-urgent-call-to-nationalise-all-energy-suppliers/
  4. The Canary: https://www.thecanary.co/trending/2022/07/25/tuc-announces-plan-to-tackle-soaring-energy-bills-which-favours-workers-over-shareholders/
Posted on

Press Release: 75% support the right to free energy to meet basic needs

The present energy pricing system is leaving thousands each year to die of cold (1) 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 (2) 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 (3).  

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 (4) 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 (5) and turn to cheaper, more sustainable sources of energy, like solar power and wind.

ENDS

For media enquires please contact:

  1. https://www.nea.org.uk/news/271120-01/ On average, over 10,000 people each year are believed to die from cold homes in the UK. This figure predates the Covid pandemic and the fuel price crisis.
  2. See our comments on the government’s oil and gas “levy” here: https://www.fuelpovertyaction.org.uk/windfall-tax/ 
  3. https://www.fuelpovertyaction.org.uk/campaigns/energyforall-petition-everyone-has-a-right-to-the-energy-needed-for-heating-cooking-and-light/ 
  4. https://www.fuelpovertyaction.org.uk/press-release/press-release-fpa-tells-ofgem-standing-charge-discrimination-must-stop-now/ 
  5. https://www.newstatesman.com/chart-of-the-day/2022/01/british-homes-among-the-worst-insulated-in-europe 

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Fuel Poverty Action is Hiring!

We’re delighted to announce that we’ve secured funding to pursue our campaign for Energy For All!  Below we’re advertising two posts – one full time, one part time.  We very much look forward to expanding our team.

To apply, please send cover letter and CV to [email protected] by 5 pm on 7 July 2022 (extended deadline) with “e4a Application” in the subject line, and get in touch if you have any questions.

Energy for All Campaign Coordinator

Download a PDF of the job description here or read it below:

Energy-for-All-Campaigner-Coordinator

Energy for All Campaigner: Parliamentary Focus

Download a PDF of the job description here or read it below:

Energy-for-All-Campaigner-Parliamentary-focus

Posted on

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. 

Posted on

Press Release: FPA tells Ofgem: standing charge discrimination must stop now. 

Fuel Poverty Action has sent a letter to Ofgem challenging new discriminatory policies in advance of this Friday’s price cap rise. Fuel Poverty Action reports that the administrative costs of taking on customers from failed energy suppliers has been loaded onto the fixed, standing charge element of energy bills, which nobody can escape. It puts lives at further risk as people who are already rationing heat and power are forced to pick up the tab for industry failures, which Ofgem sanctioned. 

Fuel Poverty Action’s co-director Ruth London said, “Why have Ofgem decided to make the poorest customers pay for their bad decisions and for bad practice in the industry? This huge injustice must be urgently reversed. Then standing charges should be ended, and we should move instead to Energy For All, a pricing structure where everyone will get enough energy free to cover their basic needs for heating, cooking, and power.” 

She adds, “Prepayment meters are another way that people with the least resources — and often with the leakiest, most poorly insulated homes — are forced to pay the highest price for fuel. These meters are often imposed without consent, cost more than direct debit, and have the effect of cutting people off supply. As prices increase, it is absolutely urgent to end such upside-down policies.

“The support offered by the government – essentially a loan that customers will have to pay back, and some help for council tax payers – barely scratch the surface of what is needed. Much more drastic changes are urgent, to ensure the basic right to warmth.”

The move away from standing charges is a step towards the new pricing structure: Energy or All, a basic supply of energy free to all, to cover needs like heating, lighting, and cooking. 

Energy for All has gained momentum rapidly with over 300,000 signatories on a petition launched by Fuel Poverty Action. Signatories have joined Fuel Poverty Action in writing to Ofgem and have so far sent 1,200 letters to CEO Jonathan Brearley. 

ENDS

For media inquiries please contact Alexa Waud on 07751748026

Or email us on [email protected]

Spokespeople are available for broadcast interviews.

Posted on

Energy For All Manifesto | Show your organisation’s support for Energy For All

Support Energy For All – the revolutionary change in energy pricing that you endorsed. We now have a Manifesto, which we’ll be launching with an evening online event. Everyone is invited to join the launch on 23 March at 6.30pm.

If you are a representative of an organisation, we invite you to sign the Energy For All Manifesto and help make the launch a success by demonstrating the widespread determination to see Energy For All become a reality.

If you are an individual who supports Energy For All, take digital action and ask your MP to support a Universal Basic Energy Allowance. The Early Day Motion for a universal basic energy allowance was launched in parliament on 18 October 2022 and will have its second reading on 24 March – the day after our Manifesto launch.

The nightmare of prepayment meters being forcibly imposed on customers who could not avoid going into debt has exposed the rottenness of a system based on profit rather than need. We won a suspension of this practice, but now need to stop the debt accumulating in the first place. 

The Manifesto has gone through a long process of consultation. It spells out many of the implications of Energy For All, beginning with action to insulate homes, install sound heating systems, and deal with the injustices of the present pricing system – including the linkage of electricity prices to the exorbitant cost of gas, instead of cheaper, cleaner, and more climate-friendly renewables. We hope you will like it, add your organisation’s name, share it with others, and join us on 23 March!

Posted on

Malus Court Watergate

Graeme Langton and Eddie Farrell, Malus Court residents

Following Pendleton Together’s revelation late Friday afternoon by letter, Malus Court residents will be without water for 30 hrs this coming Wednesday. How will this affect residents?

On Malus Court we have a range of ages and disabilities living on here. Ages range from new-born babies up to residents in their 90’s. Disabilities include mental health conditions, dementia, end of life diagnosis and conditions keeping residents bed bound. For example, the resident who is 90 years the day before the water switch off needs constant care – help with bathing and medications and regular toilet needs throughout the day and night. He needs to be kept warm and eat regular hot meals. His wife in her late 80’s also has medical needs and also needs medical care daily being diabetic. The strain on their health is enormous, not only physical but mentally as well. They struggle to cope heating their flat due to spiralling bills that come with a heating system that is not suitable with the property. There is no insulation on the property. Malus Court is under fire watch since Grenfell. Fire risk recommendations since 2017 have been ignored. And this couple live 7 floors up, fearing if a fire did happen they would die in the building.

Now we have ‘Watergate’, switching water off for 30 hrs. Pendleton Together, our landlords, and Salford Council who own the properties have put these measures in place for the Watergate disruption:

  • They have offered use of ( 1 ) toilet for 84 flats totalling over 100 residents, situated over 100 metres away and only accessed by leaving Malus Court and braving the weather that day/night.
  • They have offered bottled water if we contact them or go fetch it ourselves. ( I am sure the bedbound residents will mange that (not)) .
  • They also refuse to open their offices for residents to have face to face conversations with management, although the rest of the country have returned to work. But let’s be thankful, they have offered to come to the back door and speak outside with residents through resident liaison officers who have no authority and repeat same answer – ‘we don’t know, someone will ring you back’ – which never happens.

So this gentleman and his wife will have no water for 30 hrs. They’ll have no toilet facilities in their home to use as they would not be able flush toilet when they both need access to a toilet all day/night due to their medical needs. They cannot wash and keep clean for 30hrs. But if they walk 100 metres and queue up outside they might be able use the one toilet available if they don’t soil themselves waiting or they die due to the cold or exertions to get there. This is just one example. How do families feed babies and wash them? 

All residents should be put in hotels or alternative accommodation until this Watergate has ended. 

The past years since Grenfell residents have had to endure:

  • Windows leaking, and going into debt because of heating bills for a system that does not warm your home but costs hundreds of pounds per month. 
  • No insulation on building making them very, very cold. 
  • Fire risk recommendations not actioned. 
  • Vermin infestation/ silver fish. 

The list is endless. And now Watergate and still our ward councillors, local mayor and Manchester mayor and MP ignore our plight and refuse to visit or even open dialogue with residents over our concerns. Lives are at risk and the local authorities are failing in their duty of care. And if something tragic happens while we wait for them to help, ‘Lessons must be learnt’ will be the answer.

Posted on

#EnergyForAll Petition

Diane Skidmore 

Sign the petition: https://www.change.org/p/energyforall-everyone-has-a-right-to-the-energy-needed-for-heating-cooking-and-light

UPDATE (October 2022): Latest information backing our Energy For All Campaign.

The petition for Energy For All and its hundreds of thousands of signatures have made waves in the UK, shaking assumptions about what is needed and what is possible. Since we issued the call in February, the background information has changed. 

The 54% increase in energy prices came in on 1 April – with an even bigger rise expected in October. Groups and people across the UK mobilizing and pledging to take action in response brought a halt to what could have been the most disastrous energy price rise in our lifetimes.

The Energy Price Guarantee, capped the unit price of energy at twice what it was last winter and was expected to cost up to £150bn in taxpayer’s money to the energy sector – now the new Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has stated this will be reviewed in April. Should this cap be lifted, the average household could pay around £4300 a year towards energy bills.

Increasingly, people are recognising that a price freeze or one-off windfall tax does not deliver the security that consumers need. Having seen our petition, a cross-party group of MPs has now opened up discussion within parliament on Energy For All, beginning with an Early Day Motion proposing a ‘Universal basic energy allowance’. You can email your MP asking them to sign!

The need to reverse the huge injustice of energy pricing remains as strong as ever. 

The petition has brought this issue onto the agenda.  Energy For All, as defined below, is as up-to-date and relevant as ever – a stepping stone away from inequality, and towards a more caring way of life. Join the next stages of the campaign to help make this demand a reality!   

#EnergyForAll Petition- Everyone has a right to the energy needed for heating, cooking, and light (original post, February 2022)

Energy bills have risen dramatically in the last year – and the price cap is now to increase by 54% in April. This rise will leave millions of people like me struggling with cold homes. Many of us are facing damp, ill health, darkness, hunger and misery. Before the pandemic and the price increase around 10,000 people died each winter in the UK’s cold homes. Now even more will die.  

I’m a pensioner living on a council estate in south London, and even before the recent price increases it was a struggle for me and my neighbours to keep warm. I am asthmatic, and many of us have health problems, as well as problems with our housing conditions. My grandchildren don’t even visit me because my house is too cold. I’ve been working with Fuel Poverty Action for more than ten years now. There are too many people who cannot afford or struggle to keep warm.

To end this outrage, Fuel Poverty Action is calling for #EnergyForAll.

#EnergyForAll means giving everyone a free amount of energy – that is enough energy, free, to cover the basics like heating, cooking, and lighting – to give us all the security we need, taking account of people’s actual needs related to their age, health, and housing. To pay for this new pricing system, Energy for All, we’re urging the Government to introduce a Windfall Tax on the profits of oil and gas producers, traders and suppliers, and to STOP  subsidising fossil fuels with millions of pounds every day. 

The UK is a wealthy nation, with many billionaires – now more than ever due to fortunes made in the pandemic. Many companies, including energy companies, are clocking up exceptional profits – while we struggle to pay the prices they are charging.  

No one should get ill or die because of cold homes. No one should spend days in libraries or shopping centres to keep warm. Every home should be well repaired and insulated so we don’t need so much energy in the first place. We need your help to stop the outrage of fuel poverty – please sign and share this petition!

The government says we will get £200 back – but that will be a loan which we’ll have to repay in future bills. I have no idea where that money will come from in the future. They also say most people will get an extra £150 – very welcome, but far from enough.  From April, many will see an increase of around £700 per year – more if your home is poorly insulated, or if you are on a prepayment meter, like many people on low incomes. 

Instead of filling the pockets of fossil fuel companies, taxpayers money should be used to make sure everyone can keep warm. And the pricing system should be fair. 

At present, we pay more per unit of gas or electricity if we use less of it. At present, we pay a high standing charge even when we use very little energy, or none at all.   Our new pricing system, Energy for All,  would eliminate that injustice and turn pricing right side up. 

Please join my campaign to ensure we get #EnergyForAll. 

In April 2022, Diane Skidmore, who started our #EnergyForAll petition, was interviewed by Rob Rinder on Talk TV about rising energy bills, watch below:

Note: “e4a: Energy for All” is a proposal for a new pricing structure for energy, and is entirely distinct from energy4all.co.uk which supports community renewable energy projects. Fuel Poverty Action also strongly supports the aims and cooperative initiatives of Energy4All.