Fuel poverty continues to hit more households

And the outlook is “profoundly disappointing”, according to the independent expert commissioned by the Government to review fuel poverty, with the scale of the problem set to treble by 2016 on 2003 levels.

Under the latest formula, which counts people who have to spend more than the typical amount on fuel bills and where the costs push them below the poverty line, 7.8 million people in 2.7 million households in England were in fuel poverty in 2009.

This compares with 7.2 million people in four million households in fuel poverty in 2009, the most recent year for which figures are available, under the current measure that they spend more than 10 per cent of their income heating their homes.

Official figures show that the number of households in fuel poverty has more than trebled since 2004 when 1.2 million families struggled to afford to heat their homes.

The bigger figures were revealed yesterday in a report from Professor John Hills of the London School of Economics and Political Science, commissioned amid concerns about the 10 per cent measure.

His report suggests amending the formula because existing figures include people who are not actually poor and do not focus on the twin issues of low incomes and high fuel costs, or measure the depth of the problem.

Professor Hills warned fuel poverty was a “serious national problem” which will have trebled in scale from 2003 levels by 2016, the year by which the Government has targets to eradicate the problem.