Living in cold homes after heating improvements: Evidence from Warm-Front, England’s Home Energy Efficiency Scheme
Introduction
Warm Front (WF) is the UK government’s main programme for tackling fuel poverty in English households, providing grant-funded packages of insulation and heating improvements. Though the scheme has significantly raised average indoor temperatures [1], a minority of recipients maintain relatively low temperatures. This paper explores two possible explanations, ‘rational’ or ‘adaptive’, modelled schematically as routes 1 and 2 in Fig. 1.
A rational model suggests that low temperatures are explained by residual heating problems. Either Warm Front has not secured sufficient improvements in energy efficiency or recipient householders are unable to use the improved heating system effectively either because they find it difficult to operate [2] or because of the enduring financial constraints of fuel poverty [3]. The assumption here is of residents living below a human-comfort zone defined by a heat-balance model of the kind pioneered by Gagge [4] and Fanger [5]. Brager and Dear [6] describe the deterministic logic underpinning such a model as ‘physics → physiology → subjective discomfort.’ Originally developed in a laboratory, such models assume ‘that the effects of a given thermal environment are mediated exclusively by the physics of heat-and-mass exchanges between the body and environment.’ In summary, comfort is a function of temperature; low temperatures imply discomfort.
However, residents may prefer their homes colder than these modelled comfort zones. As an alternative to the deterministic model, an ‘adaptive’ model can account for such preferences. Brager and Dear [6] offer ‘the notion that people play an instrumental role in creating their own thermal preferences through the way they interact with the environment, or modify their own behaviour, or gradually adapt their expectations to match the thermal environment.’ For Chappells and Shove [7] comfort is a ‘malleable construct,’ either residents’ acknowledge cold living conditions and respond with more clothing and/or by altering their pattern of daily living, or alternatively, they may feel comfortable with low temperatures as a result of thermal experiences and expectations.
These two models of comfort suggest differing consequences for the health of recipients living in cooler conditions. The UK government has chosen the ‘rational’ option in developing a Fuel-Poverty Strategy, [8], [9] drawing on ample evidence of a direct physiological link between low temperatures and increased risk [10], [11], [12] of both circulatory and respiratory disease. A recommended minimum living room temperature of 18 °C can be traced back to a scientific review of evidence on healthy living conditions by the European Regional Office of the World Health Organization [13]. Later the Building Research Establishment [14] and Brenda Boardman in her influential work on fuel poverty [15] further distinguished health-related from comfort-related temperatures. The UK Fuel Poverty Strategy recommends ‘standard’ temperatures of 21 °C in living rooms and 18 °C in bedrooms to achieve comfort, automatically securing the lower threshold temperatures (18 and 16 °C, respectively) for avoiding risk to health.
An ethical dilemma arises if occupants of objectively cold homes report acceptable levels of thermal comfort. According to proponents of the adaptive model, these occupants may be exercising a degree of personal control, suggesting a psychosocial route to health. There is evidence that perception of control influences comfort, ontological security [16] and health [17], [18], [19], [12]. However, older residents especially, may feel in control and comfortable at low temperatures yet expose themselves to physiological health risk. There is clear evidence that ageing is associated with diminished cold-induced thermoregulation. Impaired capacity to discriminate low temperatures [20] may lead to a reduction in body temperature. In extremis, such an adjustment to cold stress, an inverted version of the ‘boiled frog syndrome,’ [21] can lead to hypothermia and death.
This article contributes evidence bearing on this ethical dilemma of choice verses risk. If choice is an illusion, heavily constrained by fuel poverty and building conditions, then the government has made a correct policy response to persistently low temperatures in some recipient households, enhancing the Warm-Front Scheme by introducing more extensive measures to lift energy-efficiency ratings [9]. If, on the other hand, low temperature is a genuine choice, then there is an ethical dilemma when the risk to health is increased. We seek to quantify the balance of choice and constraint.
Section snippets
Methods
The study drew on a sample of 888 households in receipt of new heating-systems or significant heating repairs: a sub-set of 3489 households was surveyed for a larger study of the Warm-Front Scheme in five urban areas of England: Birmingham, Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Southampton. University Ethical Protocols were followed for non-medical subjects. First, wave surveys were conducted in the winter of 2001/2, a second wave in the winter of 2002/03, targeting dwellings both before and
Results
Preliminary analysis of the data on post-intervention properties is consistent with a ‘rational’ explanation for low temperatures. Using the cold homes (not cold homes) outcome, Table 1 gives the adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals for the initial model (model 1) on geographic area and individual respondent demographic characteristics.
Cold homes are least prevalent in Southampton which has the mildest climate of the five cities surveyed. Respondents from Birmingham,
Discussion
The Warm-Front Scheme is a major component of government strategy to eliminate fuel poverty in England and enable even the poorest households to maintain healthy indoor temperatures. Yet exactly a quarter of our sample of 888 households in receipt of the Scheme measures reported temperatures below the threshold set by the Government’s Fuel-Poverty Strategy.
A rational explanation assumes there are residual heating problems, either because Warm Front has not secured sufficient improvements in
Conclusion
Prima facie, headline evidence that a quarter of the 888 recipients of high-level energy-efficiency measures still maintained low living-room or bedroom temperatures, qualifies the success of the Warm-Front Scheme operating when our surveys were undertaken in the period 2001–2003 and lends support for the enhanced version of the scheme introduced in 2005 [9]. For a significant minority living in cold homes, new provisions to raise energy efficiency levels beyond a certain threshold will help
Acknowledgements
This study was undertaken as part of the national evaluation of the Warm-Front Scheme (England’s Home Energy Efficiency Scheme). It was supported by the Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and the Welsh Assembly Government under contract to the Energy Saving Trust (EST contract number M47). The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the funding departments. Paul Wilkinson is supported by a Public Health Career Scientist Award
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Members of the Warm Front Study Group. Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, University College London; Sung H Hong, Research Fellow; Tadj Oreszczyn, Professor; Ian Ridley, Lecturer; Sheffield Hallam University; Roger Critchley, Visiting Research Fellow; Jan Gilbertson, Research Fellow; Geoff Green, Professor of Urban Policy; Mike Grimsley, Senior Lecturer; Bernadette Stiell, Research Associate; London School of Hygiene, Tropical Medicine; Ben Armstrong, Reader; Zaid Chalabi, Lecturer; Jack Dowie, Professor; Shakoor Hajat, Lecturer; Emma Hutchinson, Research Fellow; Megan Landon, Research Fellow; Wendy MacDowell, Research Fellow; Maryjane Stevens, Consultant; Nicki Thorogood, Senior Lecturer; Paul Wilkinson, Senior Lecturer; National Centre for Social Research; Richard Boreham, Research Director.