Multiple vulnerabilities? Interrogating the spatial distribution of fuel

poverty indicators in England

Cait RobinsonEPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Power NetworksCollaboratory for Urban Resilience and Energy (CURE)

Getting the measure of fuel povertyFuel poverty as driven by low income, energy efficiency, energy price

LIHC indicator10% indicator

Vulnerability as the likelihood of a household falling into fuel poverty(Middlemiss and Gillard 2015)

Energy related practices, needs, flexibility

To what extent does the new LIHC indicator represent more complex understandings of vulnerability to fuel poverty?

Spatial distribution of DECC indicators

10% Indicator LIHC Indicator Change

ONS  2011,  DECC  2014  

Considerable reduction in fuel poverty771,014 fewer households fuel poorAn increasingly urban phenomenon 8.1% decrease in rural LSOA, no change in urban LSOA

Lower Super Output Area (LSOA) Scale: 400-1200 households

Multiple vulnerabilities methodology

Limiting disability or illness

Young children

All pensioner household

Private renter

Unemployment

Non-gas central heating

Lone pensioner household

10% fuel poverty indicator

Linear regressionSingle estimate for the whole of England.Regression equations explore relationship between vulnerability variables and fuel poverty indicators

LIHC fuel poverty indicator

Census (ONS 2011)

(DECC 2015)

(See Fotheringham et al. 2002 for more detail)

For a 1% increase in fuel poor households using DECC indicator..

National regression

-0.4

-0.2

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

Estim

ate

(%)

10%  IndicatorLIHC  Indicator

Non-gas and pensioners à Unemployment and families with young childrenReflect that the 10% indicator is closely aligned with changes in fuel price

Missing vulnerabilities

Increasingly urban phenomenonReflected in vulnerability variables represented Non-gas and the elderly à unemployment and young children

Use of narrow triad of drivers means that LIHC struggles to represent range of vulnerabilities e.g. lone parent households

Disconnect between indicators and those most in need (Snell et al. 2015, Walker et al. 2014) Issue of distributional and recognition injustice (Walker and Day 2012)

Need for an indicator framed using vulnerability?

caitlin.robinson@manchester.ac.uk@caithrobin