Cold and damp homes caused nearly 5,000 excess deaths last winter, according to a campaign group.
The End Fuel Poverty coalition estimate that as many as 4,950 fatalities may have been caused by living in cold homes.
It is a 53 per cent rise on the year before and more than double the figure reported in 2019.
While December 2023 was exceptionally warm, average daily temperatures for the UK in January are forecast to dip as low as -1.6 degrees and fell to -14 in some parts of the UK last night.
Figures released by the charity show that as many as 8.3 million adults in the UK are living in cold or damp homes, which can have a significant impact on health.
Cold homes can cause and worsen respiratory conditions, cardiovascular diseases, poor mental health, dementia and hypothermia as well as cause and slow recovery from injury.
A survey conducted by the campaign in December found that households in London are most likely to be living in cold, damp homes (23 per cent), followed by people in Yorkshire and Humber (22 per cent), the West Midlands (18 per cent) and the North West (17 per cent).
Jan Shortt, General Secretary of the National Pensioners’ Convention, which is part of the Warm This Winter campaign, said: “We are very concerned at the level of disinterest shown by the government in the welfare of older people at a time when the temperature is dropping well below freezing.
“It fell as low as -14 degrees this week and even in towns and cities it does not get much warmer until later in the day. This presents a real dilemma for older people struggling with the cost of energy and other inflated bills – we know many are already afraid to turn the heating on at all.”
Ministers have been criticised for allowing three energy firms to return to forcibly fitting prepayment meters (PPMs) after they were temporarily banned following a scandal around the practice.
Ofgem said that EDF, Octopus and Scottish Power had met its set of conditions, which include conducting internal audits to identify PPMs wrongfully installed before the February 2023 moratorium and offering compensation and a return to a non-prepayment payment method to any affected customers.
Greenpeace UK’s climate campaigner, Georgia Whitaker, urged the Government to insulate homes at “speed and scale” to help combat fuel poverty.
“This would drastically reduce these unavoidable deaths, as well as helping to tackle the cost of living and climate crises by lowering bills and slashing household emissions.”
The End Fuel Poverty Coalition desrcribes itself as a broad coalition of more than 70 anti-poverty, health, housing and environmental campaigners, charities, local authorities, trade unions and consumer organisations.
