Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what recent estimate he has made of the number of children in (a) Rotherham constituency and (b) South Yorkshire living in fuel poverty.

Fuel poverty is measured at the household level rather than the individual level and detailed data on the age of household occupants is not available at the sub-regional level.

The number of households in fuel poverty in England, which contain at least one child under the age of 16, was 898,000 in 2011. This is equivalent to about 38 per cent of all fuel poor households.

The total numbers of households in fuel poverty, for the areas in 2011 were estimated as:

• Rotherham constituency – about 3,960 fuel poor households

(around 11 per cent of all households in the constituency)

• South Yorkshire – about 62,750 fuel poor households

(around 11 per cent of all households in the county)