The Scottish Government spending plans of 11 September announced funding allocations of £79 million to tackle fuel poverty for each of the next two years ,2014-15 and 2015-16.

The Scottish Government is committed to eradicating fuel poverty and is doing everything within its limited powers to achieve this. We will continue to use this funding for the Home Energy Efficiency Programmes for Scotland to lever in private sector funding from the energy companies seeking to meet their obligations under ECO, to ensure the future of our £200 million fund 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.

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.

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.

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 Scottish Government has a statutory duty, “to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, that people are not living in fuel poverty in Scotland by November 2016”.

The Scottish Government is committed to eradicating fuel poverty and is doing everything within its limited powers to achieve this. As fuel poverty statistics published in December 2012 show, Scottish Government action is mitigating swingeing fuel price increases. Despite 14% fuel price increases in Autumn 2011, Scottish Government action to improve household energy efficiency prevented a further 35,000 households falling into fuel poverty.

I met with each of the major energy suppliers individually over the autumn/winter of last year to raise concerns about energy price rises and to press the individual energy suppliers to support vulnerable consumers and will be looking to arrange further meetings with the utilities in due course to keep up the dialogue on fuel poverty.

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.

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.