As the full force of winter begins to close in and the nights grow colder, I know far too many of us are having to keep one nervous eye on our heating bills.
The sad fact is that an estimated quarter of people in Wales are living in fuel poverty, which is defined as having to spend 10% or more of household income on energy to keep a home warm to a satisfactory level.
What is disappointing is to see the Welsh Government continuing to miss targets and failing to treat this matter with the urgency it deserves. As the Equality and Social Justice Committee in the Welsh Parliament points out, the Welsh Government is over two years late in publishing its revised Tackling Fuel Poverty Plan.
The fact is that official estimates on the number of households living in fuel poverty were last calculated in 2021 and are now several years out of date. If the Welsh Government does not collect data efficiently, then we are not going to be able to get to the bottom of the crisis and begin to tackle it effectively.
One aspect that makes tackling fuel poverty particularly difficult in Wales is the fact that we have an ageing housing stock, which makes homes harder to heat. While the Welsh Government has allocated funding to insulate these properties, the fact remains that the Warm Homes Scheme is far too ineffective and inefficient.
The Bevan Foundation projects that, at the current pace of work, the Warm Homes Programme would not complete its work until the year 2160. That is simply unacceptable.
So what should the Welsh Government do?
For starters, we need to ensure that the approach to tackling fuel poverty is based on up-to-date official statistics.
Secondly, we must ensure that schemes like the Warm Homes Programme are delivering value for money and operating at an effective pace.
Finally, we need to do more to eradicate poverty as a whole in Wales through a dynamic range of policies, including boosting the economy to ensure that hard work pays, cutting taxes for hardworking people, and replicating England’s childcare offer here in Wales.
Peter Fox MS - Monmouth
