Скачать или смотреть ‘Fuel poverty kills six a day in winter – that’s a disgrace’

In the race to hit climate targets, a stark warning comes from those on the frontline: don’t leave families behind.

Over the last few months, more than 500 pressure cookers have been delivered to homes in the central belt. Not as a gimmick, but to address a very real need.

“It began last autumn,” says Frazer Scott from Energy Action Scotland. “Reports were coming in that more and more families were asking local food banks for cold packs.”

Cold packs mean food that can be eaten without the need of heat, with the demand suggesting people were finding their budgets so tightly squeezed, they could no longer afford to turn on the oven.

Lower-energy pressure cookers were a quick way to stick a plaster on far too deep a wound.

It’s a big problem for government which, at the same time as tackling fuel poverty, wants to achieve climate targets of getting Scotland’s homes off gas and onto climate-friendly energy.