This winter, half a million more households will be at risk of Fuel Poverty, having to choose between heating their home and putting food on the table.
As the costs of fossil fuels soar, everyone is being hit by rising bills. Many are already desperate, and 1.5 million people have also been affected by their energy supplier going bust in the past few days. Meanwhile Universal Credit is to be cut. Over three million people in the UK live in fuel poverty and this will increase by another ~500,000 households now the Price Cap has been raised.
For ten years, Fuel Poverty Action has been advising, campaigning, and joining with dozens of other organisations - from tenants and residents associations to climate campaigns - to organise for change. As well as supporting people in crisis, we will continue to press the government for real solutions: liveable incomes, affordable, climate-friendly energy, and safe, warm housing. We are a member of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition. You can support the Coalition's petition for urgent financial assistance to those affected by the energy price crisis alongside rapid roll-out of programmes to improve the energy efficiency of homes: https://actionstorm.org/petitions/fuel-poverty-crisis
Cold homes kill. Help us fight for affordable, sustainable energy.
We work with people organising to make their homes fit to live in - battling energy suppliers or landlords, fighting for their own, their families’ and neighbours’ survival. We insist that “affordable” and “sustainable” homes and energy are not incompatible goals, but two sides of a coin, and equally urgent.
To do this - we need you!
The best help you could give us is to sign up for a monthly donation. If you can’t do this, you can make a one off donation; or share our crowdfunder in your networks.
Extreme cold, heatwaves, storms and floods are increasingly common. People of all ages live in cold, damp housing, and wages, benefits and pensions are under attack. Fuel Poverty Action is struggling to meet the demand for our time, accumulated experience and expertise.
Help us keep our paid worker - Maddy.
Photography by Becky Payne
We are run by a small team of volunteers. In January, we brought on Maddy Winters - a campaigner with a decade of cold home experience, for ten hours a week at £15/hour. This underpins everything our wider group does unpaid. We will use your donations to extend this employment.
Maddy has been involved in climate and social justice campaigning for 12 years.
“I feel like I have found a place where I make a profound difference to people’s lives with my work. After many years spent trapped in cold housing, struggling with disability and barely able to pay bills, I know first hand what is at stake. I hope to remain at Fuel Poverty Action for as long as possible.” - Maddy Winters
Alongside daily reproduction of FPA, Maddy will work on our District Heating campaign - directly supporting residents at the end of their tether in estates with exorbitant or poorly performing communal heating systems - bolstering efforts for accountability and democratic control. With regulation due this parliament, we campaign to get prices tied to what people can afford.
With your donations, we aim to double our network of residents (now over 50 estates) - putting people in touch so they can support each other and speak directly to policy makers. And we can act as a catalyst for this rapidly spreading technology to fulfil its promise of low carbon, low cost heat.
“FPA have been amazing and very informative in helping with the heating issues I am facing. I don’t know what I would have done without them!” - Ms Lewis, Peabody tenant, Phoenix Works, Tower Hamlets.
Our other initiatives include “Making Green Come True”, which launched in December, bringing together over 70 tenants, residents, builders, architects, academics, trade unionists and activists all fighting to ensure that retrofits are accountable, effective, and do not result in disasters like Grenfell.
Our Safe Cladding and Insulation Now! campaign demands non-toxic, non-flammable insulation and cladding, and well-installed energy efficiency retrofits that genuinely make homes warm and dry. We are supporting tower block residents in Salford who are making history with a court case under the Homes Fit for Human Habitation Act.
The Energy for All campaign will continue fighting for a fair pricing system that doesn't penalise people who have the least and use least energy.
At this moment, we have a chance to move away from the deadly energy and housing markets that kill 10,000 people a year in cold homes. And at the same time, we have a chance to avert the worst of a climate apocalypse.
Thank you for the overwhelming support you have given us so far! We could not do this without you.
- Alexa, Ruth, Gianluca, Joana, Maddy, Phil, Rhiannon, Diane, Frances L, Frances S, Graeme, Steve, Ellen, Aisha, Bridgit, Matthew and everyone else at Fuel Poverty Action.