Chamber and committees

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/parliamentarybusiness/28877.aspx.

The Scottish Fuel Poverty Forum is an independent Ministerial advisory body which Ministers attend when invited. In the last 12 months, the Scottish Fuel Poverty Forum has met six times, on the following dates:

9 October 2012

12 December 2012

12 March 2013

9 May 2013

18 June 2013

18 September 2013

Further information on the Forum and its meetings is available on the Scottish Government website at:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/Built-Environment/Housing/warmhomes/fuelpoverty/ScottishFuelPovertyForum.

I attended the meeting on 12 December 2012 and confirmed that Scottish Ministers believe the Forum should continue to challenge the work of the Scottish Government when appropriate and continue to work with Ministers and Scottish Government officials to tackle fuel poverty.

In June offers of grant totalling £46 million were issued for the first round of HEEPS area based schemes.

A second funding round is currently being assessed and allocations will be announced shortly.

However, delays in the publication of the ECO guidance, leading to uncertainty about how the new schemes would work, and a shift in focus under ECO away from cheaper, easier to install measures, such as loft insulation, to more technically complex insulation techniques, has meant that there have been delays in developing ECO-eligible schemes.

The 46,000 increase per 5% fuel cost rise was calculated based on the SHCS data from 2009. It takes no account of changes to the energy efficiency of the stock or the income of householders since then.

The SHCS Key Findings 2011 report illustrated that fuel poverty was estimated at 684,000 households as at October 2011.

We are working closely with Ofgem to ensure the monitoring information they publish on ECO investment covers all of Scotland and provides sufficient level of detail to enable us to monitor the effectiveness of our programmes. And we will collect monitoring information from local authorities setting out how our investment has been used to deliver energy efficiency measures and help to tackle fuel poverty.

The Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland (HEEPS) area based local authority schemes have a current budget of £55 million for this financial year and it is the Scottish Government’s intention that this is all spent on tackling fuel poverty and improving energy efficiency.

It should be noted that an unallocated amount of £5 million has been reallocated from the original budget of £60 million for area based schemes to mitigate the impacts of welfare reform. A further £5 million from underutilised accruals (i.e. unused provision) from 2012-13 takes the total contribution to £10 million.

Delays in the publication of the ECO guidance, leading to uncertainty about how the new schemes would work, and a shift in focus under ECO away from cheaper, easier to install measures, such as loft insulation, to more technically complex insulation techniques, has meant that there have been delays in developing ECO-eligible schemes.

It is not possible at this time to know how much Scottish Government funding has been spent as schemes are still developing and monitoring processes are being put in place.

We are currently considering a number of options for assessing the effectiveness of the Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland. As part of this we will closely monitor the number of households assisted and the number of measures delivered.

All of Scotland’s local authorities have been offered funding from the current budget of £55 million for this financial year for area based schemes.

It should be noted an unallocated amount of £5 million has been reallocated from the original budget of £60 million for area based schemes to mitigate the impact of the “bedroom tax”. A further £5 million from underutilised accruals (i.e. unused provision) from 2012-13 takes the total contribution to £10 million.

Details of funding requested by councils as at end June 2013 are set out in the table below. All requests have been allocated in full. Requests for further funding are currently being considered and will be announced in due course.

Summary of Local Authority Funding Requests – to end June 2013

The Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland (HEEPS) have a current budget of £74 million for this financial year and it is the Scottish Government’s intention that this is all spent on tackling fuel poverty and improving energy efficiency.

It should be noted that an unallocated amount of £5 million has been reallocated from the original budget of £60 million for area based schemes to mitigate the impacts of welfare reform. A further £5 million from underutilised accruals (i.e. unused provision) from 2012-13 takes the total contribution to £10 million.

It is not possible at this time to know how much Scottish Government funding has been spent as schemes are still developing and monitoring processes are being put in place. However, in June we announced the first £46 million of funding for local authorities from our HEEPS area based schemes and local authorities advise us that, currently, they intend to leverage almost £130 million of ECO funding from energy companies.

Information on HEEPS spend will be published in due course.

The SHCS shows that fuel poverty for Scotland in October 2011, following a steep fuel price increase, was nearly 29% (approximately 684,000 households).

Local authority levels of fuel poverty are published on the internet and are publicly available on the Scottish Government website under: Scottish House Condition Survey - 2009-2011 Local Authority Report: Table 8.10.