For over six years, Campaign Collective has provided the coordination for the End Fuel Poverty Coalition.
The Coalition is a broad coalition of over 70 anti-poverty, environmental and health campaigners, local authorities, trade unions and consumer organisations. Organisations wishing to join the Coalition can find out more online.
As energy bills remained at record levels – and the Government support from 2023/24 ended, households continued to struggle with the cost of energy. Looking behind the headline figures, the EFPC records on unit costs show the ongoing impact of the energy bills crisis. And for many on Standard Credit and Economy 7 tariffs, the picture is even worse.
The new Government was elected in July 2025 with over half of voters saying that Labour’s pledges to bring down bills were one of the main reasons they voted for the party. Despite warm words on energy efficiency, insulation and a social tariff, one of the Chancellor’s first moves was to axe winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners.
The official number of households in fuel poverty in England has barely moved and stands at 3.2m in 2023, down 0.1m from 2022 (but static at 3.2m compared to 2020). The last Government predicted that this would fall to 3.17m in 2024, based on the LILEE model.
But the estimated number of households across the UK in fuel poverty as we head into 2025 remains between 6 and 7 million according to NEA.
Over 8 million adults will spend winter 2024/25 in cold damp homes, with one in ten reporting that they live with frequent mould.
While ministers in both Governments have talked up 300,000 households being helped by schemes to improve energy efficiency, since the start of GBIS, there have been 19,500 measures installed in 15,600 households up to the end of June 2024. Estimates from E3G and others have found that it will take a century or more at the current rate to actually complete even 300,000 homes.
Combined, government policy and delays in roll out of energy efficiency schemes continue to have devastating consequences:
- The Winter Fuel Payment cuts alone will affect millions of poorer and disabled older people, it will hit four-fifths of older people with long term illnesses which are made worse by living in cold damp homes. And it will cost the NHS as much as it will save the DWP.
- More broadly, those living in fuel poverty experience critically low energy usage levels, leaving them wide open to the risks of living in cold damp conditions.
- Cold homes can cause and worsen respiratory conditions, cardiovascular diseases, poor mental health, dementia and hypothermia (Institute of Health Equity) as well as cause and slow recovery from injury (PHE).
- Fuel poverty impacts people’s physical health by causing higher levels of inflammation, measured by fibrinogen, a blood-based biomarker. Elevated fibrinogen levels have been strongly linked to higher risk of coronary heart disease, heart attacks, stroke and an increased risk of death (UEA).
- Two-thirds of people in fuel poverty experience debilitating levels of depression or anxiety (Well Based EU)
The End Fuel Poverty Coalition continued to represent and demonstrate the diverse range of organisations which are committed to ending the energy challenges households face. And we continued to collaborate with a wide range of groups to highlight the solutions – such as child poverty groups, debt campaigners, tax reform supporters and the Warm This Winter campaign.
As previously, the Coalition work plan envisaged for 2024 was again overtaken by events, however the group continued to have significant impact on the debate around the crisis.
New members of the Coalition were welcomed, such as Carers Trust, Fair By Design, MECC Trust and a range of community energy programmes.
Additional and extensive funding for the coordinators’ time was also maintained via the Warm This Winter campaign. Indeed this funding, secured via Uplift, has ensured we were able to deliver activity in support of Warm This Winter alongside the general coordination and specific activity funded by members’ subscriptions for the Coalition.
Key Performance Indicators
After falling back in 2023, website traffic rebounded back to 2022 levels as search optimisation changes introduced have paid off and inbound links from news websites increase.
There were over 46,000 web page views from 28,000+ visitors in 2024, this is up from 6,000 views / 3,000 users before the energy bills crisis in 2020. By far the most popular page was the information about fuel poverty, energy firm profits data and information about excess winter deaths.
In the media, the Coalition has been regularly quoted and such has been the demand for spokespeople on fuel poverty, that the co-ordinator has again had to undertake media interviews with major news channels, including BBC Breakfast, BBC Rip Off Britain, Sky News and regular appearances on GB News, LBC and Talk TV.
54 news stories were issued in 2024 (2023 = 79, 2022 = 68) as well as additional quotes and comments and monitoring of media was also improved. This resulted in over 12,400 articles with a circulation / audience of over 11.2bn (2023 = 10,000 / 2.8bn, 2022 = 4,308 / 1.5bn).
This means that every UK adult had an opportunity to hear about the work of the Coalition more than 211 times in 2024 (2023 = 53, 2022 = 26). And the reach of coverage featuring our members will mean that what we report here is just the tip of the iceberg of our cumulative efforts.
The turmoil at X continues to cause issues with our social media reach which has declined due to the changes in algorithms and people leaving the platform. LinkedIn and BlueSky have continued to grow, especially since the US election, but Mastodon and Threads have proved less useful.
The success of the campaigns by Coalition members has led to increased correspondence with the regulator, Government, MPs and responses to consultations – all formal correspondence is now published online: https://www.endfuelpoverty.org.uk/news/reports-and-correspondence/
Increased levels of correspondence has had a direct impact with the Coalition coordinator invited again to give verbal evidence to the House of Commons Select Committee on Energy Security and Net Zero and take part in a discussion about the priorities for the Committee post election. In addition, meetings with the Minister for Energy Consumers and the Chief Executive of Ofgem were also held to discuss pressing issues.
The coordinator also spoke at events, including the Energy Action Scotland annual conference and took part in meetings with wider stakeholder groups to discuss joint campaigning after the election.
While the early General Election caused challenges in the ability to deliver planned activity in 2024, we have been monitoring the new intake of politicians in Westminster and continue to engage regularly with both new and old MPs through regular distribution of news stories and ad hoc information and meeting requests. Notable meetings have taken place with Rachael Maskell MP and Jess Asato MP.