A couple have been forced to sell their belongings to afford their bills because of their home's sub-standard energy efficiency rating.
Jonathan Smith, 25, and his wife Katie, 22, say their house in Liverpool is so cold, they avoid opening doors and use eBay to raise money to pay their bills - despite both being employed.
He told us rent rises and recent increases in bills are crippling them.
"Last November, during our house move, we found a place for £750. That was the best price we could find, but the £200 increase in rent is bringing us to our knees.
"We simply don’t trust anyone else right now to actually reduce costs for us and we now make sure we submit our own meter readings.
"We are also turning the heating on less and resorting to blankets instead to purposefully drive our bill down each month.
"Our house is a converted old dairy shop which has quite clearly been built to be cold, so even if it’s 25 degrees outside it’s still freezing in here… our own cuts mean our bill has gone down, but only because of the personal sacrifice we’re making to be colder.
"We can’t afford it, no. Even with having knocked some cost off our bill in the last couple of months with hard self-control to not go and flick the boiler on, for the first time ever this month our monthly expenditure of bills actually tipped over into being greater than my monthly income.
"We are in our prime and yet can’t enjoy life. We keep having to say no to friends who want to socialise because it always involves money we don’t have. We’re overdrawn every single month. We have nothing to show for the lack of money next to our names, only hard work that barely pays the bills and leaves us with nothing else. Saving anything is a pipe dream.
"To cope we have started selling possessions from around the house online just to be able to afford to eat. What else can we do?"
A quarter of a million landlords are letting families live in homes that are so expensive to heat they are illegal to let out, figures suggest.
Tenants in these properties are estimated to £321million more on energy bills this year than they would if their homes met basic standards, according to figures from Generation Rent.
South West England is the region where private renters are most likely to live in a home that fails Minimum Energy Efficiency Standards (MEES) – nine percent of households are affected, compared with six percent in England as a whole.
Despite rules requiring landlords with properties rated F or G on their Energy Performance Certificate (EPC) to install insulation and efficient heating systems, Generation Rent said just one in eight councils is enforcing them and protecting tenants from sky high heating bills.
Ahead of Thursday's elections, campaigners are calling on councils to identify local private rented homes that fail these standards, and take action to bring them up to standard while giving tenants protection from eviction and a chance to claim back rent.
Generation Rent analysed EPC data to assess the scale of the problem in each region in England.
A total of 201,000 homes recorded as private rented are classed as F on their EPCs and 62,000 are classed as G, out of a total of 4,265,000 with an EPC.
Recent research by JLL found that following the increase in the energy price cap, the average energy bill for a Band G property is now £4,950 per year and £3,587 for a Band F home.
For a home at the legal minimum of Band E, the average bill is £2,687.
Upgrading a Band F home to the legal minimum would therefore save the average tenant £900 per year and upgrading a Band G home is worth £2,263. Across all households affected, landlords’ failure to comply with the law is worth £321m per year.
Private renters in London are least likely to be in a poorly insulated home, with 3.3% failing standards, followed by the North East with 4.0%, the figures show.
The worst region is the South West where 9.1% are rated F or G; private renters in the West and East Midlands have a 7.5% chance of living in a home that fails minimum standards.
Since April 2020, under MEES, landlords are no longer allowed to let out a home with an EPC band of less than E, unless it has an exemption.
As of 1 July 2020, just 9,269 private rented properties had an exemption from MEES.
Landlords failing MEES are liable for a maximum fine of £5,000, and their tenants are not protected from eviction if they complain or eligible to claim money back to compensate for higher bills.
However, councils enforcing MEES can usually serve non-compliant landlords with improvement notices on the basis that the home is too cold to be considered safe.
This protects tenants from a retaliatory eviction for six months and gives them the basis to claim back rent through a Rent Repayment Order if the landlord fails to make the necessary improvements.
Alicia Kennedy, director of Generation Rent said councils must commit to using publicly accessible data on EPCs to identify tenants in cold homes and enforce the law.
She said: “A quarter of a million households are in homes too cold to be legal and with energy bills through the roof, they are paying hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds more than they should as a result.
“People will miss meals, get ill, and fall into arrears as a result of their landlord’s negligence.
“Councils have the data and the powers they need to protect the most vulnerable tenants – but at the moment most are not using them.
“The government needs to act much faster to ensure that private landlords insulate their properties, including by reforming tenancies to give tenants more confidence to exercise their rights.”
*Names have been changed to protect anonymity
