Petition: Poorest households due to miss out on £400 Energy Rebate

Energy bills have been going up and will go up even further. 

Government ministers promised a £400 support package to help struggling families going to "every household".  This claim has been widely repeated in the Press.  But it is not true.

In April the BEIS (Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy) designed a method which they recognised would exclude the poorest 300,000 households from receiving the rebate.  Actually, their official estimate is "up to 400,000" households.  

The government says that there will be equivalent support package for the 1% of households excluded, with proposals to be announced this autumn.  But the indications are that this new package will be poorly designed and still miss out hundreds of thousands.  My company alone serves over 3,000 households who are not going to get any money from either the original scheme or the emergency equivalent support.

Those who will miss out on the emergency fill-in package includes:

• tenants in flats with sub-meters;
• tenants with bills inclusive or who reimburse the landlord.

The BEIS are not speaking to the organisations who can actually identify these these households,  The documents released by them so far, suggest that they don't have a good grasp of the situation. Without involving sub-metering companies and landlord representative bodies, it is hard to see how these funds can be delivered to the right families. Astonishingly, the BEIS have shut their call centre and are not monitoring their emails.  We cannot contact them.

Please sign this petition, and circulate it.  Write to your MP.  This issue urgently needs to be drawn to the government and public's attention, so that the money allocated can go to those people who will desperately need it this winter.

Gary Wernick

SIGN ENERGY REBATE PETITION HERE

(If you want further information then please read Government Documentation Supporting My Claims).

Click to hear a report on this and an interview that I gave on BBC Radio Solent on 19th August