Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, pursuant to the Answer of 21 November 2014 to Question 214565, what assessment his Department has made of the accuracy of the proxies in determining which families are fuel poor.

In England, households in fuel poverty are those with both a low income and higher than typical energy costs. The Energy Company Obligation (ECO) is directed at these households in two ways. Firstly, eligibility is linked to the receipt of means tested benefits. This helps us focus support on households with a low income. Secondly, the “scoring system” built into the policy creates a series of incentives for participating suppliers to target high cost households within this low income group, and recent changes to the ECO have straightened the incentives.

While it is possible to quantify the accuracy of the benefits-related proxies used for identifying low income households, it is not possible to quantify suppliers’ exact response to the incentives for targeting higher cost homes. As such, it is not possible to produce a robust estimate of the accuracy of targeting under ECO.