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report interim independent review of the fuel shortage means that the number of people living in cold homes contribute to abnormally high levels of Great Britain "excess winter mortality"

Nearly 3,000 people in England and Wales could die this winter because they can not afford to heat their homes, a report suggests -. More than the number of people killed in traffic accidents every year

commissioned by the Government, the review found that energy poverty Hills if only 10% of winter deaths in the UK are caused by fuel shortages - a conservative estimate, say - 2700 people die as a direct fuel to be poor.

The report also found that between 2004 and 2009, the "energy poverty gap" (the additional amount they are poorly insulated houses and poor heating systems would have to spend to keep warm) increased 50% to £ 1.1 million due to fuel prices.

end of 2011, 4.1 million homes in England should be in fuel poverty. Households are considered poor if the fuel they need to spend more than 10% of their income on fuel use to heat a house to a level of heat, generally defined as 21C and 18C in the living room in the other rooms occupied.

In October 2010, the government announced it would commission an independent study of energy poverty, to investigate how best to define and measure and treat the underlying problems that lead to it.

The interim report of the review, written by John Hills, director of the Center for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics, the government leaves no doubt as to the extent and depth of the problem of fuel poverty with many of the most vulnerable families in the UK.

The report, which supported the current definition of energy poverty, living in households revealed that cold has a number of effects on health and mental illness, but more serious is its contribution abnormally high rate of Great Britain "excess mortality in winter."

In the report, Mr. Hill wrote: "There are many contributors to this problem, but even if only one tenth of them are directly attributable to fuel shortages, which means that 2700 people in England and Wales are dying -. an annual income of more than the number killed in traffic accidents "

Hills

also found that while it is essential that the energy efficiency of homes in the UK has improved, low-income housing worst can not afford to pay for it and "need for help elsewhere. "

a home warm and energy conservation law of 2000 said that the shortage of fuel must be eradicated, "as far as possible" for the year 2016, but the shortage of fuel in the same time England has fallen by four fifths between 1996 and 2004 (5.1 million households to 1.2 million households) has more than tripled since then.

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