Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what steps her Department is taking to work with local authorities to reduce the level of fuel poverty.

We are working with Local Authorities on fuel poverty initiatives in several ways:

• In March 2015 we announced the £25m Central Heating Fund, a Local Authority competition designed specifically to implement the principles of the fuel poverty strategy. 20 Local Authorities were successful and are now delivering central heating systems to low income households in their local communities. Installing a central heating system can cut the cost of heating a home adequately by over £1,000 a year, making real progress towards our fuel poverty objectives.
• Also in March last year we distributed £1m to scale up nine existing Local Authority schemes focused on tackling cold homes to improve people’s health. The evaluation of these projects is now underway and we are working closely with the Local Authorities to assess their impacts on health and on fuel poverty, as well as the effectiveness of their different approaches to delivery.
• Green Deal Communities awarded 23 Local Authorities funding to provide subsidy to householders to install energy efficiency measures, mainly solid wall insulation. Many of these schemes are targeting and providing funding to householders in fuel poverty.
• We are also interested in the role Local Authorities could play in a future energy company obligation (such as ECO); using local knowledge and working with ECO obligated energy suppliers to identify households in the greatest need. We will be consulting on the design of a supplier obligation in due course.