Our child fuel poverty campaign

No child should grow up in a cold home.

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Child Fuel Poverty Campaign

No child should grow up in a cold home

Young lives are blighted

In National Energy Action’s Youth Insights for Change workshops, many students described staying in bed under covers as a heat saving strategy and avoiding being at home (spending time at friends’ homes or clubs) to keep warm. One child talked about school as the ‘safe, warm space’.

Workbook responses repeatedly mentioned not inviting friends home; fearing judgement of a ‘cold, smelly, mouldy’ home; feeling left out; and spending time at friends’ houses to avoid being at home.

How to solve this

The evidence points to multiple solutions that could alleviate these problems:

Warm homes standards that prioritise children and damp/mould enforcement across tenures and all UK nations

Child‑focused retrofit and insulation programmes

Income support and energy debt protections, with tiered support for families with children

Funded breakfast/warm spaces in schools

Accessible crisis support and wraparound referrals through trusted settings

Find out what we’ve done so far

Ben’s story: Candles and cold

Ben’s cold home used to make his eczema worse – and he would have to sit in the dark with candles. Find out how we helped him.

Ellie’s story: Playing ‘penguins’

Ellie used to play ‘penguins’ as her family would huddle together for warmth. It was her parents’ brave way of shielding her from the realities of fuel poverty.

Our 6 million figure

The estimate of around 6 million children living in fuel poverty is derived from official fuel poverty statistics and Office for National Statistics (ONS) data on family size.

First, we estimate the number of fuel poor households across the UK using the relevant national fuel poverty measures. Analysis suggests that around one third (33.3%) of fuel poor households contain dependent children.

We then apply ONS data on the average number of dependent children in families with children. According to the ONS, 45% of families with dependent children have one child, 41% have two children and 14% have three or more children. Using a conservative assumption of three children for the final group gives an average of around 1.7 dependent children per family with children.

Applying this average to the estimated number of fuel poor households with dependent children produces an estimate of:

5.1 million children in fuel poverty in England
193,000 in Wales
488,000 in Scotland
174,000 in Northern Ireland

This gives a UK wide estimate of approximately 5.9 million children living in fuel poverty, which we round to around 6 million.

As with any estimate that combines multiple datasets and assumptions, the figure should be regarded as indicative rather than a precise count. However, it provides a useful illustration of the scale of child fuel poverty across the UK.

The central point is that millions of children are growing up in households that struggle to afford adequate warmth and energy services, with all the associated impacts on health, wellbeing and educational outcomes.