97%

of homes in Blackpool are below an EPC of C, with 39% of them being let by private landlords

Introduction

Over the weekend, the price cap was raised on the minimum amount suppliers could charge customers. The multiple crises facing people across the UK are combining to ensure that this will leave long term impacts.

People in the UK are taking an economic battering:

• Gas and electricity prices becoming unaffordable for many

• A year of petrol prices at their highest in real terms since 2014

• Highest single year increase in rent charges on social housing since 2013

• Private rented sector housing increasing

• Inflation rising the costs of living and basic supplies

• Stagnant wages

• And an economic recession on the cards compounded by the decisions of this government.

All this after Covid and the disasters it has and continues to cause.

This change in home utility pricing is a health risk, a disproportionately impacting one, and a more nuanced one that “eat or heat”.

Home as Sanctuary

Throughout a given day people experience positives and negatives. For many, the negatives outweigh and leave an impact. Often referred to as stressors they can have a neurobiological impact such as raising cortisol levels. These stressors can range from the inhalation of air pollution, harassment, or a feeling of an inability to escape a situation. The home is intended to be a place of restoration, a place of retreat, a place of family, a place of self. Afterall, sleep allows our bodies to restore and heal.

When people can no longer use their home to heal and feel that they are in a place of rest, they are at greater risk of not restoring. The home in the case of higher costs is no longer a healer but a harmer.

From Sanctuary to Stress

When we are unable to restore against stressors and experience them chronically there are impacts to otherwise regularly occurring biological systems. Chronic stress increases the individuals ‘allostatic load’ level – which refers to the wear and tear of stress-related biological systems e.g., neuroendocrine, metabolic, immune systems. Neuroendocrinologist Robert Sapolsky’s work looks into factors such as non-life-threatening stressors, such as constantly worrying about heating or eating or losing your job, and how they trigger the release of adrenalin and other stress hormones, which, over time, can have devastating consequences to your health; "If you turn on the stress response chronically for purely psychological reasons, you increase your risk of adult onset diabetes and high blood pressure. If you're chronically shutting down the digestive system, there's a bunch of gastrointestinal disorders you're more at risk for as well."

The added burden of environmental stressors further impedes the body’s ability to restore and heal. The sheer experience of compounding injustices is a health risk in its own right. 

When a home is rented through the private sector the occupant is at the mercy of a tenancy agreement and personal decisions of the owner. Should we be allowing this much influence over people’s health to be in the hands of people who are financially motivated?

Place, Health, and Homes

A dignified society places responsibility on ensuring that homes are sanctuaries for people. After-all, even the most basic economist would agree that an unhealthy workforce is bad for business. Therefore, the choice to allow people to live in poorly insulated homes that don’t shelter them from the elements, cause them stress, and ill health is not about free markets and rational economics, it’s creating systems of power.

In August this year a survey of more than 2,000 UK adults by market research company Savanta ComRes found 23% would not turn their heating on at all over the winter months, with this figure rising to 27% among parents with children under 18.

Homes with worse insulation and energy efficiencies will have the least resistance to the outdoor climate, putting people in harm's way of cold temperatures and poor sleep adding stress burdens. A societal system that cared about the health and wellbeing of its citizens would identify areas and buildings where this would have the worst impacts and act. In the next chapter we present a methodology to do just that.

Data for Good

Environments that are high in stressors need to be counteracted by homes that heal. A good indicator as whether the home offers the most basic form of healing is its Energy Performance Certificate rating. The process looks at a range of indicators from wall cavity insulation, ventilation, existing heating systems, heat loss to shared areas to determine whether the home is efficient. As such it can be used as a proxy for healing; providing shelter, security, and calm from the elements: pollutants and weather.

People who live in homes with low EPC ratings in areas of high biological inequity are at greater health risks this winter. We combined data available on EPCs with our own databases to uncover where in the country there are different people at greater risk. We’ve specifically focused on homes that have an EPC below ‘C’ as a current bill in Parliament is effectively declaring them insufficient for habitation.

We’ve done this to show that people needn’t suffer when the appropriate political decisions are made. Everything humans created is through choice, nothing is inevitable, everything is possible.