Predicting Fuel Poverty at a Local Level
The ability to target households suffering fuel poverty is vital to meeting the Government’s objective of eliminating fuel poverty in England. The Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) and University of Bristol, funded by the Department of Trade & Industry (DTI, now BERR) and others, have produced a new fuel poverty indicator (FPI) to predict the incidence of fuel poverty in small areas across England.
Maps and data are available for every county in England, the maps show the incidence of fuel poverty at Lower Super Output Area level (LSOA). LSOAs typically contain about 400 households.
The Centre for Sustainable Energy: Fuel Poverty Indicator website also provides guidance on how to interpret the FPI and some suggestions for how the FPI might be used.
Using the Fuel Poverty Indicator
The FPI is a versatile and powerful tool that can be used for the following:
- Informing the targeting of fuel poverty programmes
- Informing the development of local affordable warmth strategies
- Raising awareness of fuel poverty as an issue for concern (the maps are particularly useful in this respect)
- Supporting funding bids for projects to combat fuel poverty
- Helping make sure grant programmes and other fuel poverty resources are reaching areas with high levels of fuel poverty
- Informing research, e.g. exploring the relationship between fuel poverty and health inequalities, other health indicators and deprivation indicators.
The FPI Research
The FPI is based on a complex statistical model developed by the University of Bristol. In brief, data from the 2003 English House Condition Survey (EHCS) and property database RESIDATA was used to predict the risk of fuel poverty for different household types. The weighted model was then applied to the 2001 Census to provide a fuel poverty estimate for individual geographical areas.