Darllenwch y dudalen hon yn Gymraeg
Last month we told you about the work we’ve been doing to improve access to data on energy efficiency of homes, including the publication of a new dashboard using information on energy performance certificates. If you missed this, you can go back and read the blog post. Today, we’re expanding our work on energy and fuel further by publishing an interactive dashboard of fuel poverty data for homes in Wales.
Why have we published this dashboard?
Stakeholders and policy-makers told us they could really do with a ‘one stop shop’ for statistics on fuel poverty and closely related topics. They said it wasn’t easy to find the information they needed and it was not always presented in a digestible way. So the Housing Conditions Evidence Team set about developing an easily accessible tool that allows users to explore the data interactively, rather than just a static compendium report.
What is fuel poverty?
A household is regarded as being in fuel poverty if they are unable to keep their home warm at a reasonable cost. In Wales, this is measured as any household that would have to spend more than 10% of their income on maintaining a satisfactory heating regime.
Each nation in the UK has its own metrics and measures for fuel poverty so direct comparisons are not possible. The recently published article on Fuel Poverty across the UK (Office for National Statistics) explains this fully.
What is in the dashboard?
The dashboard presents data in four main sections:
- fuel poverty estimates: we look in depth at the number of households in severe fuel poverty, those at risk of fuel poverty, and vulnerable households.
- fuel prices: we show the domestic price energy indices and the Ofgem price cap in recent years, and also a breakdown at a local authority level of the number of households that have received winter fuel payments in the last few years.
- household income: the focus here is mainly on gross disposable household income (GDHI) (StatsWales) and also those households below average income (HBAI) (Department for Work and Pensions).
- energy efficiency of homes: this includes data on some of the levers Welsh Government has to influence energy efficiency like Warm Homes Programme activity, including the NEST and ARBED schemes; and measures of the Energy Company Obligation.
What should be considered when using this dashboard?
The data presented in the dashboard comes from a range of sources, so whilst it is fairly comprehensive, it is not always comparable. Just to stress again, each nation of the UK uses its own metrics and measures of fuel poverty and so comparisons across the UK are limited.
What are the future plans for this dashboard?
We will endeavour to update the dashboard with the most recent data on fuel poverty and related topics as and when there are sufficient updates to the sources used. Broadly we expect to update quarterly.
As we have designed this dashboard in response to stakeholder and policy-makers’ requests, we really do welcome feedback to make sure this dashboard meets your needs.
Which sections have you used and how? Is there anything missing? Anything that could be clearer? Any further analysis we could try out etc? Get in touch with us at stats.housingconditions@gov.wales.
Stephanie Howarth
Chief Statistician