Staying warm and staying healthy
Current figures show that over 40,000 more people die in winter (December to March) than would be expected at other times of the year – a level not even seen in much colder countries such as Siberia.
Exposure to cold is also known to increase risk of heart attacks and strokes; affect mobility and risk of falls; and trigger respiratory illness. Damp, cold housing is associated with increased asthma, respiratory infections and impaired mental health.
The tragedy is that these health risks are preventable if people keep warm both indoors and outdoors. So why are the figures for our country so shocking? Part of the answer is that for 4 million households in the UK, keeping the home warm is financially difficult. This is often due to low household incomes and / or the low energy efficiency of large parts of the UK housing stock. If they spend more than 10% of their income on fuel use, they are known as being in fuel poverty. Over half of the people in fuel poverty are aged over 60 years.
Help for people at risk
There are energy efficiency grants and other help available to assist people in cold homes, but these are not reaching some of those who need it most. Older people, especially low income owner occupiers and private tenants, are difficult to reach.
Why this website?
The Health Housing and Fuel Poverty Forum website aims to:
- Inform ‘Front line’ health or social care workers - how to get help for a person living in a cold home.
- Assist cross-sector working to tackle cold homes by providing:
- information on the issues of concern to different sectors
- lessons from work already done in this field to help ‘hard to reach’ vulnerable people
- opportunity for purposeful discussion to improve cross-sector working
HHFPF Action Plan
Initial action plan proposal given to HHFPF Core Group on 13th June 2006