Belfast council has agreed a £500,000 hardship fund for residents of the city being hit hardest by fuel poverty.
Elected members at this week’s Strategic Policy and Resources Committee unanimously agreed to a report looking at how a voucher-led fund could be set up.
Councillors also agreed to send a request to the Stormont Department for Communities to match the council spend on the fund with a further half million. It is believed the fund has the potential to help 5,000 families across the city, a figure that could be doubled with help from Stormont.
Read more: Cost of living: Northern Ireland families could save up to £2,000 per year on childcare costs
The proposal by Green Councillor Anthony Flynn states: “This council recognises the enormous hardship facing households across Belfast caused by rising fuel, food and energy bills, and notes the devastating report from the University of York, which suggests that 72 percent of Northern Ireland households will be in fuel poverty by January 2023."
The committee unanimously agreed to task officers with a report looking at options of how to allocate £500k for an Emergency Fuel Poverty Hardship Fund, using one-off vouchers to households in most need. It also agreed to “commit to a long-term strategy around leveraging community-owned energy projects to reduce energy bills and create sustainable communities.”
Councillor Flynn said: “The lines of poverty are going to be very much blurred this winter - we are looking at increases on working families across the city which are going to put people in dire need. People are going to have to choose between heating and eating, and that is an absolutely unbelievable situation.
“We have had obviously some help from the Westminster government in relation to energy bills, but it doesn’t cut it when it comes to the real need that people are going to have this winter.
“I spoke to National Energy Action this week about their Warm and Well scheme - which works off referrals essentially, and is not well known in public - and they have seen a massive increase. The Trussell Trust has reported that food bank use is through the roof, and some of our own food banks have seen a massive increase as well.”
SDLP Councillor Donal Lyons said due to his “concerns” about the workload of council officers and the need to have the scheme running “as soon as possible,” the fund could be used to help existing projects such as Warm and Well. He said: “By adapting an existing process we can speed this along so we can actually get the help out to people in immediacy.
“To start a process from scratch could take three, four, five months, and if it is beginning next Spring we'll have missed the immediate and inherent dangers.”
People Before Profit Councillor Fiona Ferguson said: “It is clearly not the role of this council to be doling out vouchers to people to get them through this Winter, but I do think it is a sensible thing for us to do, given what an utter shambles anyone in power above the level of this council seems to be in.”
Sinn Féin Councillor Ronan McLaughlin said: “We have to remember that over 60 percent of homes here in the North actually use oil, and they are due to get a £100 payment.
“If you compare that to England, where only three percent use oil, you can see the disparity in the policy from the British government at the time - where they just negated the special circumstances of the majority who are on oil here. A £100 payment for oil is simply not acceptable.”
He said by the time the council proposal was ratified the Department for Communities would be likely not to have a minister. He said he “unfortunately could not see” a match fund from Stormont.
The council officer's report on how the fund is to be facilitated will be returned next month, and any decision on this will be subject to ratification by the full council.
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