Call to stop winter deaths

Many older people live in cold homes

Help the Aged is calling on the government to do more to reduce the number of elderly people who die each winter.

It says winter fuel payments are fine, but what's needed is to make homes better places to live in.

The charity says 21,800 older people died in England and Wales last year as a direct result of the cold.

It estimates that the UK has the highest number of what it calls "excess" winter deaths in the European Union.

Help the Aged says the underlying reason for the deaths is fuel poverty - that means people having to spend more than 10% of their income on keeping their home warm.

Insulation

The problem is often worse for elderly people because they live in older houses which have poor insulation and are hard to heat.

The resulting cold conditions can lead to circulatory and respiratory illnesses.

Mervyn: Adventurous strategies needed

"What we are calling for is a great deal more effort going into refurbishing and upgrading the heating systems of our cold, damp homes," says Help the Aged's Mervyn Kohler.

"In Scotland, where a different policy exists, the offer is that every older household will be entitled to ask for a new central heating system if they do not have one or if their existing one is broken.

"It's adventurous strategies like that that we do not see in England, Wales or Northern Ireland that we ought to be rolling out."

The winter fuel payment is given to people over 60 who meet certain conditions.

It's either £100 or £200, depending on how many people in a household.

But those over 80 can get an extra £100.

Valuable

However, Mervyn Kohler believes the problem needs to be tackled at its root cause.

"Getting our cold, damp homes fixed is a win, win, win for all sorts of different reasons," he says.

"It improves the quality of the housing stock and makes that house more valuable to future generations of occupiers.

"It will also help save on energy and it will make life nicer for the older person who is living in that house at the moment."