Frozen in place: Why the Government needs to move quicker to address energy affordability

Frozen in place: Why the Government needs to move quicker to address energy affordability 1.53 MB

The Labour government came to power last year with ambitious plans for their first term: to improve living standards, deliver clean power by 2030, and tackle child poverty. They inherited a challenging situation, with energy prices stubbornly high and record levels of household energy debt built up during the crisis. To recover living standards for those on low-incomes and in particular households with children, the government must introduce targeted bill support. While the 2030 Clean Power Action Plan should deliver decarbonised energy while bringing prices down in the longer term - without targeted support some low-income households face higher bills in the shorter term, driven by the volatile cost of gas.

Over 3 years since the energy crisis began, prices are lower than their peak but still far higher than historic norms. Households have struggled to recover, and many have faced a particularly difficult first winter under the new government. To understand how people are faring we commissioned nationally representative polling . The picture is clear - millions of households have struggled to recover and face little prospect of doing so in the medium term. As the winter draws to a close:

• 3 in 10 (30%) said that they find it difficult to afford their energy bills, equal to over 8 million households.

• Nearly two thirds (63%) of people in energy debt said that they had had to ration their energy, including switching off or turning down their heating or water in the past year as a result of their debt, equal to 4.2 million people in these households.

• More than a quarter of people on prepayment meters (29%) have been disconnected from their energy supply in the past year because they couldn’t afford to top up. That’s equal to 2.8 million people in those households.