To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what progress has been made on reducing fuel poverty in vulnerable households in Easington. (182419)

I have been asked to reply.

Regional level estimates of households in fuel poverty are most recently available for 2003 and come from the Fuel Poverty Indicator Dataset available online at:

http://www.fuelpovertyindicator.org.uk/

The dataset does not attempt to split out vulnerable households from non-vulnerable.

These show that in 2003, there were around 2,660 households (both vulnerable and non-vulnerable) in Easington local authority in fuel poverty.

The only estimate that exists for previous years was for 1996 and is not strictly comparable with the 2003 figure as the geographical modelling was done at a different level. The indicative figure for 1996 was around 10,000 households living in fuel poverty in Easington.