Cold homes kill more than die on roads

Social policy expert Professor John Hills, who is leading an independent review into the problem for the Government, said more people die each year from fuel poverty than are killed in traffic accidents.

The interim report said there were 27,000 excess winter deaths in England and Wales each year.

It said: “Recent analysis attributes about a fifth of excess winter deaths to living in cold homes.

“Even if only half of this in 2009 is due to fuel poverty, that would still mean 2,700 deaths – more than die on the roads – each year.”

Prof Hills, director of the centre for analysis of social exclusion at the London School of Economics, said: “We think that people dying on the roads is a very big problem so this is a very big problem.

“Of course behind all of that there are many more incidents of poor health, sickness of different kinds, respiratory problems and as a consequence many more calls on the NHS.

“There’s also evidence of people having to face the heat-or-eat trade-off.”

The report found that fuel poverty is a “distinct issue and a serious problem” and that the main causes are low income, energy efficiency and fuel prices.

Prof Hills said: “All three (causes of fuel poverty) of those things come together in a way that is very well described by the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000, which defines a person as to be regarded as living in fuel poverty if he is a member of a household living on a lower income in a home which cannot be kept warm at reasonable cost.

“I think that is a very good description of the problem as it emerges from this report. That is the focus of the problem.”

A household is deemed to be facing fuel poverty if it needs to spend more than 10 per cent of its income on heating.

Four million households were considered to be fuel poor in 2009 but Prof Hills criticised how the problem was defined and called for a change.