Let’s end fuel poverty

NEXT week I’ll be marking Cold Homes Week by highlighting that cold homes cost lives, and redoubling efforts to persuade the Government to properly fund measures to address it.

Using just 2% of the infrastructure budget could mean energy efficiency for half a million low income homes every year, as well as creating more than 100,000 new jobs.

More than 5,000 households in my constituency of Brighton Pavilion can’t afford to heat their homes properly.

As chairwoman of the all-party parliamentary group on fuel poverty, I’ve highlighted to ministers that cold homes cost the NHS more than £1.3 billion every year, with children growing up in cold homes twice as likely to contract diseases such as asthma.

But it’s not just the quality of our local housing that’s a problem. It’s the cost too.

Last week, a report by housing charity Shelter found that a couple with children would have to save for almost two decades to afford a deposit for a home here.

We urgently need more affordable housing, and I commend the local Green administration for making this a priority, including building the first new council housing in a generation.

We must also put an end to the right to buy, with money from current sales reinvested back into new council housing.

Just a few months ago, I backed the tenancies (reform) bill, which sought to protect tenants against retaliatory eviction.

Yet two lone Conservative MPs were able to talk it out – a desperately irresponsible act which saw the bill scrapped.

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