Failure to insulate UK homes costing thousands of lives a year, says report

Analysis finds 58 people have died due to cold homes every winter day since 2013 Tory pledge to ‘cut the green crap’

The government’s failure to insulate the UK’s cold and leaky homes is costing thousands of lives a year, according to analysis.

The report from Greenpeace reveals 58 people have died due to cold homes every day on average during the winter since David Cameron’s Conservative government decided to “cut the green crap” in 2013 – drastically slashing support for home insulation.

Paul Morozzo, Greenpeace UK’s fuel poverty campaigner, said: “Thousands of people are literally freezing to death in their own homes during winter. And not only have successive governments failed to prevent this needless and shocking loss of life but they have fuelled this silent public health crisis by slashing insulation funding and failing to deliver a proper scheme to upgrade our cold, damp, draughty homes.”

Morozzo said tackling cold and damp homes would not only save lives but would reduce bills, tackling fuel poverty and the cost of living crisis as well as reducing carbon emissions.

The Labour party had pledged to invest the £6bn a year that experts including Greenpeace say is required to tackle the UK’s housing stock. But it recently scaled back its spending plans for insulating homes by more than 70%.

To mark the launch of the report, Greenpeace activists turned a royal park outside the Houses of Parliament in London into a mock cemetery on Wednesday morning, erecting hundreds of headstones made from insulation boards.

Activists pointed out that the UK had some of the least energy-efficient housing in western Europe. Government figures released last month show there are 3.17m households living in fuel poverty in the UK. Poorly insulated homes also contribute to poor health and are estimated to cost the NHS more than £850m a year in England.

Housing is directly responsible for about 14% of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, driven in part by the large proportion of uninsulated or poorly insulated homes.

Stuart Bretherton, from Fuel Poverty Action, said: “The next government must set its ambitions high in delivering safe, non-toxic, non-flammable insulation appropriate for our homes, installed by well-trained workers.

“Repairing and retrofitting the UK’s housing stock could prevent further loss of life, create thousands of skilled jobs and vastly reduce energy wastage for households, bringing down emissions and our bills.”

Cover photo: Greenpeace activists create mock cemetery from insulation material outside Houses of Parliament on Wednesday. Photograph: Martin Godwin/The Guardian