Energy Price Cap: Residential Buildings with Communal Heating Systems
Debate between Janet Daby and Meg Hillier(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the energy price cap and residential buildings with communal heating systems.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I should declare an interest, as I live in a leasehold flat in a block with a communal heat network. I also represent a constituency with one of the highest numbers of multiple dwelling blocks in the UK, a number of which have community heat networks.
The problem is very simple. I think I should lay that out, and then I want to lay out what I am asking the Government to do and hope to get a positive response from the Minister. Quite simply, we all know about the cost of living crunch and the increased price of energy bills, and of course the Government have put in certain measures to try to mitigate that, but constituents who live in residential buildings with communal heating systems—also known as heat networks—are not protected by the energy price cap as other energy purchasers are.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
In my constituency there are many Barratt homes that have district heat networks and I have continually raised that issue in Westminster Hall and on the Floor of the House. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is even more important that the Government introduce regulation to put protections in place for residents where they have these heating networks, given the fuel crisis experience that the country is going through and the increases in fuel costs?
Dame Meg Hillier
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. About half a million people, as an estimate, live in such blocks—not only new developments such as those that she has highlighted, but some older developments that would take a lot of retrofitting to get individual heating systems in place; but that is not the answer and I will come to that in a moment.