Consumer Futures today welcomes publication of the Scottish Fuel Poverty Forum Report (as first reported in the Scottish Energy News, 24 March 2014).
In the report, the Scottish Fuel Poverty Forum urges Scottish Ministers to maintain much needed investment in energy efficiency programmes even at a time of budget constraints.
Secondly, the report also finds that putting resources towards the improvement of Scotland’s housing stock has wider economic benefits and the Forum is recommending that the Government looks to using the opportunity as a means of up-skilling and supporting SMEs.
Trisha McAuley, Director for Scotland, Consumer Futures, said: “As a member of the Scottish Fuel Poverty Forum, we welcome this report urging the Scottish Government to maintain its spending on energy efficiency schemes to help end fuel poverty.
“It highlights the progress that the Scottish Government has made in making homes more energy efficient however underlines the gaps that remain, particularly for those living in rural and remote areas in some of Scotland’s coldest and hardest to treat houses.
“There is still much more work to be done to ensure the Scottish Government realises its ambition to eradicate fuel poverty by 2016.”
The report finds that putting resources into improving Scotland’s homes can have wider economic benefits for local communities. This is one of the reasons that Consumer Futures has signed up to the Energy Bill Revolution campaign -an alliance of organisations calling on the UK government to make home energy efficiency a priority area for infrastructure investment, cutting fuel poverty in the process.
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