Heating oil: customers can apply for help to pay their bills
With the writing on the wall, in the midst of the ‘special military operation’ set upon Iran by the United States of America and Israel, this newspaper, on 12th March stated: “Let us hope this Government can get on the front foot when it comes to helping poorer households - potentially home to vulnerable people - who rely on heating oil, because the price of it already is obscene.”
Sir Keir Starmer has now hit that nail on the head, unveiling a £53m support package, put in place to aid those homes in predominantly rural areas that rely on kerosene in order to keep warm.
Targeted at low-income households, this will come as welcome relief to the 1.5m UK households that, unable to connect to the gas grid, have no other way of keeping the cold and the damp at bay.
For now, without question, just as this newspaper asked for, a temporary fix has been put in place in a bid to catch those in danger of losing their heating and hot water after the price per litre of kerosene shot up from around sixty pence per litre to, in come cases, three times that.
Surely, now, with energy supplies so clearly vulnerable to geo-political tensions, the escalation of which is far beyond the reaches of British democracy, it is time to bring the heating oil sector to heel.
At present, not regulated by Ofgem, it is a wild west. Of course, as ever, there are a good number of trustworthy, reliable, reputable purveyors of home heating oil but as recent days have proven, a great many more who are willing to park their principles in favour of ripping off consumers when a good crisis presents itself before them.
In tandem, this Government must revist the short-term options for oil and gas production that sit idly off our coastlines: in case of emergency, as this clearly is, surely better to draw up our own oil, securely and in a controlled way, to keep our own lights on?