Affordable warmth: housing strategies for older people

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to consolidate policy, research, evidence and good practice around strategies tackling fuel poverty and affordable warmth for older people aged over 60 to support the development of more effective services for this life course stage and to tackle physical and mental health inequalities. Design/methodology/approachWe consolidate current policy, research, evidence and examples of good practice in exploring effective interprofessional approaches that contribute to affordable warmth for older people through 'desktop analysis'. We support this with qualitative data from Health and Wellbeing Boards, health inequalities and environmental health from research comprising 4 longitudinal case studies in the Midlands and North of England over 18 months and semi structured interviews with members and support officers. A total of 50 interviews were undertaken and 55 hours of Health and Wellbeing Board meetings observed. FindingsThere are numerous older people living in fuel poverty. The depth of fuel poverty increases with age particularly the over 75s and physical and mental ill health are affected. There are an increasing number of tools to help estimate health care costs around the cost effectiveness of interventions and there is a real need for more local evidence about what is working well, how and why. However there is no mandatory requirement for fuel poverty strategies and more creative local strategies are required taking organisational and interprofessional relationships into account. The emphasis in integrated care provides new impetus and scope to encourage preventative services but these new partnerships need to be effective in what is a complex policy environment. There is still a long way to go in places. The challenges of ageing are numerous, complex and not fully understood and sit across multiple policy areas. Originality/valueFuel poverty strategies tend to be delivered on a geographical or income bases rather than by life course approach and a focus on older people. We need to focus more specifically on older people, a rapidly growing population and to better understand thermal properties of our ageing housing stock and how best to intervene to protect and improve health and safety. Emerging approaches need to overcome artificial statutory and non statutory divides and move toward sustainable, evidence based affordable warmth strategies for older people to protect and improve health.

Salud física y mental de personas mayores que viven en pobreza energética

“…De un corpus de 18 artículos, 15 son de origen europeo (Armstrong, Winder & Wallis, 2006;Camprubi et al, 2016;Chard & Walker, 2016;Cotter, Monaha, McAvoy & Goodman, 2012;El Ansari & El-Silimy, 2008;Gilchrist, Kamara & Rudge, 2009;Murage, Hajat & Bone, 2018;Ormandy & Ezratty, 2016;Peralta et al, 2017;Romero-Ortuno, Tempany, Dennis, O'Riordan & Silke, 2013;Rudge & Gilchrist, 2005;Stewart & Dhesi, 2016;Webb et al 2013;Wolf et al, 2010), dos de Oceanía (O'Sullivan et al, 2011;Viggers et al, 2013) y uno de Norteamérica (Kwon & Jang, 2017).…”

“…Las principal metodología utilizada es la cuantitativa, presente en 11 artículos, donde se observan análisis estadísticos de bases de datos como English Longitudinal Study of Aging Webb et al, 2013), de datos de ingresos hospitalarios (Romero-Ortuno et al, 2013;Rudge & Gilchrist, 2005) y de encuestas como American Housing Survey (Kwon & Jang, 2017), además de la aplicación de encuestas (Cotter et al, 2012;Viggers et al, 2013) y evaluaciones de éxito de programas (El Ansari & El-Silimy, 2008;Gilchrist, 2009;Murage et al, 2018;Peralta et al, 2017). Cuatro de los artículos son de carácter cualitativo, existiendo dos análisis de fuentes secundarias (Ormandy & Ezratty, 2016;Stewart & Dhesi, 2016) y dos que estudian la experiencia de la pobreza energética mediante el uso de entrevistas (Chard & Walker, 2016;Wolf et al, 2010). Finalmente, tres estudios utilizan metodología mixta, integrando entrevistas, cuestionarios, análisis estadístico de bases de datos y mediciones objetivas de salud, calidad de la vivienda o gastos (Armstrong et al, 2006;Camprubi et al, 2016;O'Sullivan et al, 2011).…”

“…Primera categoría de análisis: "Definiciones y dimensiones de la pobreza energética" La pobreza energética es principalmente comprendida desde la dimensión de equidad, por lo que los artículos se centran en los aspectos económicos del hogar vinculados a la pobreza de combustible. Esta es definida como la inhabilidad para acceder a una adecuada calefacción del hogar, la cual depende de la calidad de la vivienda, el sistema de calefacción y los ingresos del hogar, considerando el indicador del 10% de Boardman como el más adecuado para medirla (El Ansari & El-Silimy, 2008;Gilchrist et al, 2009;O'Sullivan et al, 2011;Ormandy & Ezratty, 2016;Rudge & Gilchrist, 2015;Viggers et al, 2013;Webb et al, 2013;Wolf et al, 2010), y secundariamente el LIHC (Camprubi et al, 2016;Murage et al, 2018;Peralta et al, 2017;Stewart & Dhesi, 2016). Tal como en el resto de la literatura, los artículos revisados presentan críticas al indicador de Boardman, principalmente en cuanto hay personas que consumen menos del 10% de sus ingresos en combustible, dado que optan por restringir ese gasto, lo cual no implica que no estén en pobreza de combustible (Ormandy & Ezratty, 2016).…”

Adoption of sustainable retrofit in UK social housing 2010-2015

“…The introduction of grade A appliances, specifically boilers, was driven by previous supplier obligations and also supported by the ECO, as a part of the affordable warmth strand, known as the Home Heating Cost Reduction Obligation (Stewart and Dhesi, 2016). This is also supported by asset management schemes that will replace boilers as part of both planned cyclical replacement works and also responsive repairs and maintenance in social housing.…”

“…It is possible that this view is also taken for two other RHI eligible technologies, biomass boilers and combined heat and power (CHP) systems, as both saw significant increases in adoption in 2013, prior to the availability of the RHI in the domestic context. The introduction of grade A appliances, specifically boilers, was driven by previous supplier obligations and also supported by the ECO, as a part of the affordable warmth strand, known as the Home Heating Cost Reduction Obligation (HHCRO) (Stewart & Dhesi, 2016). This is also supported by asset management schemes that will replace boilers as part of both planned cyclical replacement works and also responsive repairs and maintenance in social housing.…”