Fuel Bank Foundation says help requests could hit 15,000 per day

An energy charity has warned that without further government support following October’s price cap increase, it could see more than 15,000 people a day seeking its help.

Last month, Ofgem announced the price cap would be increasing to £3,549 per year for a dual fuel customer, an 80% rise on an already record level of £1,971. According to the most recent forecasts, this is set to increase further still in January.

Matt Cole of the Fuel Bank Foundation, which provides emergency financial support to those who prepay for their energy, said the charity is already experiencing levels of demand normally seen in the worst winter months.

Speaking to Utility Week, Cole said: “Compared to last year we’ve seen five or six times the amount of requests for help coming in to us. We are now experiencing in summer what would be an absolutely horrific winter in previous years in terms of demand.

“Typically on an average day 1000 to 1200 people are being supported by Fuel Bank. Although we were never set up for that kind of scale, we expanded in anticipation of a tough 2022.  And I am glad we did.  Some of stories we hear from the people we support reveal the impact of living in fuel crisis: we’re seeing things we’ve never, ever seen before.”

Despite the Energy Bills Support Scheme, which will give most households a £400 rebate on their bills over the winter, there has been widespread acknowledgement from the sector that this will not be enough to mitigate the full impact of the price rises.

With outgoing prime minister Boris Johnson opting to defer any support package for his successor to announce following the Conservative Party leadership election, there are major concerns from the industry over the lack of support in place with less than a month to go before the increase.

Cole continued: “If the government didn’t intervene at all, and we just see the price rises we have seen mooted in the press in the last few weeks, the support we provide this winter will last two or three days when our target is a week or ten days.

“So families would have to come back three, four or five times to get the same amount of support that we have historically provided, and they’ll be joined by households new to fuel poverty and so there will be more people needing support than ever before.

“Potentially we could see 10 or 15 times the level of demand that we have had historically in winter. That’s why there’s got to be a really well thought through policy response.”

Cole added that in this scenario, the charity would not be able to help every consumer seeking its support.

“So in some ways, it’s a bit of a moot point. We’d be physically unable to deliver it because we don’t have the funding to be able to meet whatever that winter demand could be but essentially you could be seeing maybe 15,000 people a day or more needing to access Fuel Bank,” he said.

Following the election of Liz Truss as the new Conservative leader, Cole wrote an open letter to the incoming prime minister in which he called for her to announce an additional emergency package of financial support for consumers.

He further called for more support for the more than 1.5 million households which use heating oil to heat their homes, as well as an “emergency rollout” of energy efficiency measures to help reduce consumption.

He said: “The country is facing an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis not seen for a generation.

“We urge you to show leadership and creative thinking in these challenging times to ensure that nobody in our country has to live in the cold and dark this winter.”

Other charities have also reported an increase in the number of people seeking their services.

Citizens Advice recently published its latest data dashboard which revealed the charity is continuing to overshoot projections for the number of people seeking its services who cannot afford to top up their prepayment energy meter (PPM) and that July was the fifth time this year record numbers of PPM customers had sought help.

The number who told Citizens Advice they had been unable to top up during 2022 reached more than 13,000 by the end of July. This was ahead of its projection of 12,600 and around seven times the number that had sought help at the same point in 2019 – the last normal year before the pandemic hit. The charity expects this figure to reach 21,600 by the end of the year.

Consumer protection will be discussed in more detail at Utility Week Forum this November. For more information and to book your place, see our website.