Out with the (c)old, in with the new?

High fuel costs - low income-New fuel poverty data available

In May 2014, the Department of Environment and Climate Change (DECC) released new estimates of the number and proportion of households across the country living with high fuel costs and low incomes.

The old indicator of fuel poverty, which looked at the proportion of households spending 10% or more of their income in fuel, was dropped in 2012 and the new indicator replaces it.

However our open data provides the old 10% measure from 2008 to 2012, and the new "high cost - low income" measure from 2011 to 2013.

How does it look locally?

We are publishing data at the smallest possible level of detail, to help show local stats and how much figures can vary even within a small area. DECC also produces regional and district information which helps give an overview. The table above shows district-wide data over the three years the high cost - low income data has been published by DECC.

Out with the old?

We have kept the old measure of fuel poverty in this data set to help show the change in effect of different measures, and to enable a longer time comparison across the two measures. The Fuel Poverty Atlas also looks at this issue specifically.

Sources

Open data | Fuel Poverty 2008 - 2013 updatehttp://opendata.cambridgeshireinsight.org.uk/dataset/fuel-poverty

Interactive Atlas | Fuel Poverty 2008 - 2013http://www.cambridgeshireinsight.org.uk/housing/existing-homes/fuel-poverty

DECC source data https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fuel-poverty-sub-regional-stat...

Contact

Please get in touch with sue.beecroft@cambridge.gov.uk if you have any queries on this or would like to suggest any improvements.

Fuel poverty fits into two of CRHB's four priorities: priority 3 to "raise the standard of existing homes and encourage best use of all homes" and priority 2 to "ensure homes and services support better health and wellbeing". For more background, please visit http://www.cambridgeshireinsight.org.uk/housing

We'd love you to use this open data, please do tag @CambsInsight (https://twitter.com/CambsInsight) in your tweets!