Story · Curiosities map · about 3 min
Does cold weather mean fuel poverty?
Fuel poverty is counted by council, and so is temperature, once you sample the nearest weather square to each council's centre. Put the two maps side by side and a real, if imperfect, question can be asked: does a colder place struggle more to pay for heat?
The coldest council in England
Westmorland and Furness, in Cumbria, is the coldest council in England by this measure: 7.4 °C on average in 2024. Its fuel poverty rate is 10.7% of households, close to the rate for England as a whole.
A weak pattern
Averaged across all 296 councils, the coldest third run 10.4 °C and 10.2% fuel poor; the warmest third run 12.0 °C and 9.2% fuel poor. Colder places do lean slightly more fuel poor, but the correlation across every council is only 0.23 (0 is no link at all, 1 would be a perfect one). Real, but weak.
Money matters more than the thermometer
The Isles of Scilly have the highest fuel poverty rate in England, 17.3%, despite one of the mildest climates measured here, 12.5 °C: small, remote communities pay more to heat a home whatever the weather. Wokingham has the lowest rate, 5.6%, at an unremarkable 11.4 °C. Income, housing type and how a home is heated decide fuel poverty far more than the climate does.
A question two maps can answer, one can't
Neither the fuel poverty map nor the temperature map says this on its own. It only shows up once they are both switched on together. Climate still plays a part in fuel poverty; it is just a smaller part than you might guess.
For classrooms and curious minds
Questions to talk about, alone or in a group.
- Why is a weak pattern still worth looking at, and what would a strong one look like?
- What other things besides temperature would affect whether a household struggles to heat its home?
Try it on the map: Compare the fuel poverty map with the temperature map. Name one council that does not fit the pattern.
The figures above are calculated from the datasets listed on Data & sources and are approximate: many map layers are modelled or interpolated. Read each layer’s caveats on the map.