Pensioners need immediate financial help with paying fuel bills

Pensioners need immediate financial help with paying fuel bills

– not energy efficiency schemes - which will take years to install - at the present performance of regional central heating projects!!!

Britain's biggest older people's organisation, the National Pensioners Convention (NPC), has called on the government to ensure its package of measures aimed at helping families meet rising fuel bills (due to be announced tomorrow) includes an immediate increase in the winter fuel allowance to £500 for all pensioner households.

Joe Harris, NPC general secretary said: "Many older people are already struggling to pay their energy bills and the recent increases are likely to drag well over a million more into financial hardship by the end of the year. Around 2.4m pensioner households are currently spending more than 10% of their income on fuel bills, and are living in fuel poverty. What these people need now is more money – in the form of the winter fuel allowance so that they can avoid having to decide whether to heat or eat. Energy efficiency schemes won’t help them pay their bills this month and neither will they prevent over 20,000 pensioners dying from the cold this winter.”

"Every time there is a 1% increase in energy bills, a further 40,000 older people fall into fuel poverty. It's time the government intervened to prevent the energy companies making profits at the expense of vulnerable pensioners, raised the winter fuel allowance to £500 and regulated social tariffs to give proper discounts to older customers."

FUEL POVERTY FACTS

• Nearly 90 per cent of all excess winter deaths are of people over the age of 65.
• There were 22,300 excess winter deaths of older people last year, and 260,000 since 1997.
• Almost one in three older people live in homes with inadequate heating or insulation making their homes more difficult to heat and/or keep warm.
• More than 1 in 4 people living in fuel poverty are over 70 years old
• Average annual energy bills now exceed £1,000. This will absorb 16 per cent of the income of a single pensioner dependent on the pension credit minimum guarantee and the current £250 Winter Fuel Payment.

For more information contact Neil Duncan-Jordan on 07940-357-608