One in five Oldham homes ‘fuel poor’

THE number of people living in fuel poverty in Oldham has topped 17,600 as people struggle to meet energy bills that have soared to three times their cost just nine years ago.

Official figures show 7,978 households in Oldham East and Saddleworth and 7,888 in Oldham West and Royton are having to spend more than 10 per cent of their income on fuel bills — the defining marker of fuel poverty.

The remainder of the 17,639 total in Oldham are in the parliamentary constituency of Ashton, which includes Failsworth and Hollinwood.

The Department of Energy and Climate Change figures for 2010 are significantly higher than the 11,356 struggling in 2006, and triple the 5,313 homes in fuel poverty in 2003.

And although numbers have fallen across the borough by 1,225 since 2009, it still means that 19.8 per cent of all households in Oldham are classed as fuel poor.


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