Fuel poverty figures will be months out of date
Official figures revealing the extent of fuel poverty in Scotland will not be available for at least four months, ministers admit.
The most recent statistics are for 2019, before energy prices surged and new figures will not be available until February.
Now Energy Action Scotland, the only charity with a sole focus on fuel poverty, fears the next set of statistics will be out of date before they are even published.
The charity questioned how targeted support can be provided by the Scottish Government when there is no accurate information about how many people are struggling to pay utility bills.
The Scottish Government insists other research means it is aware of the scale of fuel poverty – when households are forced to spend more than 10% of income to heat homes and are not left with enough to maintain an adequate standard of living.
The criticism comes after a report by Scotland’s spending watchdog last week criticised ministers over a “frustrating” lack of child poverty data which Audit
The SNP has urged Prime Minister Liz Truss to match Scotland’s £500 million Just Transition Fund to secure thousands of jobs in the North East. SNP MSP Gillian Martin said: “During this Tory-made cost of living crisis, we must have serious plans to ensure we are not plunged into another energy crisis in the future. At the same time, we must make a commitment to our vital oil and gas workers that they will not be left behind in making the transition to renewables.”
Scotland said “hinders the development of sufficiently targeted policies”.
The most recent figures show 613,000 households were in fuel poverty in 2019, but Scottish Government modelling has estimated that number could rise to almost 900,000 of the 2.51 million households in Scotland this year. However, energy minister Michael Matheson has now admitted official statistics won’t be available until next February.
In a written answer to a parliamentary question from Liam Kerr MSP, Matheson said: “At present there are no national statistics estimating the number of households in fuel poverty.”
Frazer Scott, CEO of Energy Action Scotland, said: “We should have those statistics now. We should be providing targeted support. I don’t know how ministers can deliver effective policy interventions without the facts.”
Fieldwork for the Scottish House Condition Survey, which provides Scotland’s fuel poverty statistics, was put on hold when Covid hit Scotland in March 2020 and has yet to resume. A remote survey was carried out last year but those figures won’t be released until February.
Liam Kerr, Scottish Conservative shadow net zero, energy and transport secretary, said: “The SNP says it cares about fuel poverty, just not enough to bother finding out who suffers from it.”
The Scottish Government said: “Any suggestion that we are not acutely aware of the deeply worrying scale of households being pushed into fuel poverty by the ongoing energy crisis is simply untrue.”