Assembly calls for Mayor to support the £5,000 cost cap in his Fuel Poverty Action Plan as an estimated million households are unable to heat their homes
Around 9,000 people in the UK died last winter as a result of living in a cold home due to fuel poverty.
A London Assembly motion has called for the Mayor to support the £5,000 cost cap in his Fuel Poverty Plan. It also asked that he write to the Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth to urge the adoption of a higher cost cap to ensure that the most vulnerable people in London are not left in dangerous and unhealthy homes.
The Mayor’s Draft Fuel Poverty Action Plan for London estimates that between 2011 and 2016 there were 1,300 to 4,000 Excess Winter Deaths in London where the inability to heat homes adequately may have been a contributory factor.
The government has announced that from April 2019 Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) will prohibit private landlords from renting properties with energy performance certificates below band E in England and Wales.
They have also proposed to remove the existing ‘no cost to the landlord’ exemption and introduce a ‘landlord funding contribution’ component where a landlord is unable to obtain suitable ‘no cost’ funding.
The government intends to introduce a cap of £2500 on the amount any landlord would need to invest on an individual property. However, to ensure this urgent social and environmental work is carried out as soon as possible, a coalition of civil society partners is calling on the government to increase the cap to £5,000 per property.
The Assembly notes that the government’s own assessment warned that the lower cap means only 139,200 households in England and Wales will benefit from better insulation by April 2020. That is 121,000 fewer than if the cap was at £5,000.
