Sandra is 79, in fuel poverty and lives in a cold, damp, uninsulated home. This is her story.
The three hot water bottles that I filled last night are barely lukewarm. But I continue to grip them tightly, under a mountain of duvets and blankets each morning, trying desperately to extract their diminishing warmth. I am freezing but I can’t bring myself to leave my bed, let alone the room, and venture into the cold to go and refill them.
Turning on the heating isn’t an option. I simply can’t afford it.
I’m almost 80 years old and, as I sit, cold and alone, in my damp Victorian one bedroom flat, watching my breath leave my mouth and the condensation run down the window pane, I live in constant fear that, during winter, the cold is going to kill me.
As shocking as that sounds, this is the sad way that life comes to an end for thousands of people every single year. Greenpeace has calculated that almost sixty people every day have died during winter over the past ten years because of cold housing.
The ten year period is significant because it was in 2013 that the Conservative government, under David Cameron, decided to ‘cut the green crap’ and effectively scrapped funding for home insulation.
Insulation installations fell off a cliff edge as a result – with government funded measures falling by almost 90% in a single year. And a failure to reinstate the subsidies, or proper home insulation schemes, by successive Conservative government’s since has been driving this silent public health crisis.
It is this government’s policies that have signed the death certificate of over 70,000 people and counting.
I developed respiratory problems and issues with breathlessness about three months after I retired, when I started spending more time at home, indoors. I have a constant cough and, although it remains undiagnosed by the doctor, it’s clear to me that the damp and mouldy conditions that I’m forced to live in is the primary cause.
My home desperately needs insulating, so I can heat it cheaply and efficiently and live in a warm safe home – my life literally depends on it. But – living in a rented flat, on a small pension, propped up by housing benefit – without financial support from the government I have no option right now but to try and endure the winter months.
I’m certainly not alone. This country has the least energy-efficient housing in Western Europe, which – as well as contributing to thousands of deaths every year – results in high energy bills, escalating the cost of living and forcing more and more people into fuel poverty every year.
The NHS is forced to fork out more than £850 million a year dealing with health conditions arising from cold homes, and housing is one of the UK’s biggest sources of greenhouse gas emissions – so a lack of insulation is directly fueling the climate crisis.
As an active member of my local environmental voluntary group, I care deeply about tackling the climate crisis and want to do all that I can to reduce my own emissions. But sadly, when it comes to my home, I can’t. And both I and the planet are suffering as a result.
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