Heating homes already a worry for pensioners
WORRIED pensioners are already asking Age Concern about the next fuel grant as the price of heating oil soars due to the Ukraine conflict.
The charity provides a grant, funded by a benefactor, each winter and applications are usually invited shortly before it becomes available.
The price of a barrel of crude oil currently stands at about $120, having peaked at $130 in March and, depending on the amount of heating oil ordered, customers were paying an average of about 96p a litre at the end of May. At the end of last year this would have been about 62p.
Age Concern chairman David Inglis said it was an unusual situation: ‘I’ve had people phone me already wanting to apply for the winter fuel grant and I’ve obviously explained that it’s shut at the end of April and it opens up at the end of October.
‘We don’t expect people to approach us.’
Although not certain that the grant will be available, he said he was not unduly worried about it.
‘If we get the subsidy from the benefactor then it will happen. They’ve been very supportive for seven years now.’
The grant has risen in recent years and in 2021 it was £205. Four years ago it was £175.
Mr Inglis said there were 90 applications covering about 120 people last winter, which was slightly up on the previous year. Some applied twice.
ATF Fuels’ director Jonathan Best said nobody could predict what will happen next with heating oil prices.
‘It is extremely difficult to forecast what prices will do in the future under ordinary circumstances,’ he said.
‘Considering the extraordinary situation we are currently experiencing, primarily due to the on-going conflict in Ukraine, it’s impossible to predict what prices will be in the winter.
‘The industry is already experiencing the highest prices on record and the potential is for that to go further.’
Petrol prices have already been hit, but government could mitigate these by reducing the amount of duty and Mr Best said this
had happened in the UK and elsewhere.
But there was nothing that could be done about heating oil, since no duty is payable on it.
The PWC Future energy demand and policy considerations for Guernsey published in 2019 stated that 37% of total energy demand in Guernsey was made up of non-electrical heating.
