2025-2026 Workplan

Our April 2025 to March 2026 workplan sets out our priorities for the coming year. The Panel’s key priority this year is to fulfil its statutory scrutiny role by assessing Scottish Ministers’ progress towards meeting Scotland’s fuel poverty targets as set out in the Tackling Fuel Poverty in Scotland: Periodic Report 2021-2024 – the first governmental progress assessment since the passing of the 2019 Fuel Poverty (Targets, Definition and Strategy) (Scotland) Act and the publication of the first Fuel Poverty Strategy designated under the Act.

Our core priorities are to:
1. Respond to the Scottish Ministers’ Periodic Report – as required by provision 14 of the Fuel Poverty (Targets, Definition and Strategy) (Scotland) Act 2019 by the end of the second quarter (September 2025).
2. Build on last year’s work on the systemic impact of rural and remote fuel poverty in order to explore solutions to rural and remote fuel poverty.
3. Look forward to exploring the benefits of a public health approach to fuel poverty in 2026-2027 by setting the groundwork for this in the final quarter (January – March 2026).

We will also continue to:

Advocate for the introduction of a flexible energy discount mechanism, highlighting the opportunity this offers to close the fuel poverty gap. We will do this by:

Continuing to work with the Scottish Government as a member of their Social Tariff Working Group and continuing to influence the UK Government on the introduction of a tariff – recognising that it is the UK Government who have the fiscal and policy levers to introduce a tariff.
Drawing attention to the need for fuel poverty mitigation to feature as a measurable objective within wider net zero policies – including contributing our thinking to the Scottish Government’s revised Heat in Buildings Bill as it progresses through the Scottish Parliament during this parliamentary session.

Seek to influence:

Ofgem in their strategic priorities of shaping a retail market that works for consumers and establishing an efficient, fair and flexible energy system, by responding to specific consultations and seeking direct engagement where appropriate.
The UK Government in their ongoing work to reform the energy system by responding to relevant consultations.

Work on:

Emergent priority fuel poverty issues while continuing to consolidate our organisational foundations by adhering to governance requirements in line with our status as an independent statutory organisation.

Engage with:

Consumer Scotland on their workstreams on a new approach to energy affordability and a future energy retail market designed for consumers.
The Poverty and Inequality Commission on Scottish Government’s next Child Poverty Delivery Plan.

1. Responding to the Scottish Ministers’ Tackling Fuel Poverty in Scotland: Periodic Report 2021 – 2024

Scottish Ministers published the first of their triennial periodic reports –Tackling fuel poverty in Scotland: periodic report 2021-2024 – on the 1 April 2025, as stipulated by the Fuel Poverty (Targets, Definition and Strategy) (Scotland) Act 2019. The Act requires Ministers to consult the Panel, among others, ahead of producing its periodic reports. The Panel then has a statutory duty to make a formal response to the published periodic report within six months.

In November 2024, in our statutory capacity as a consultee, we shared our engagement response, ahead of the Scottish Government producing its first periodic report, with Ministers and Scottish Government officials, and will now test the findings and recommendations we made in this consultation further as we work to respond to the published report.

We will, in making our response:

Explore the questions set out in provision 14 of the Fuel Poverty (Targets, Definition and Strategy) (Scotland) Act, specifically:

What progress has been made towards meeting the fuel poverty targets?
What is the likelihood of meeting the fuel poverty targets?

To what extent are the four drivers of fuel poverty are being addressed?

Are there changes which should be made to the fuel poverty strategy?

In exploring these questions, we will:

Reflect on the findings and recommendations from our periodic report engagement response, and the work we have done since, and consider others’ engagement responses – where these are published.
Consider the reflections of other stakeholders on the Scottish Government’s periodic report.
Reflect on our findings and the questions they raise to inform our research plan, enabling:
Development and execution of our research plan from the second quarter onwards.

We will work on our response during the first (April- June 2025) and second quarters (July –September 2025).

2. The systemic impact of fuel poverty in rural and remote areas – what are the potential solutions?

Last year (April 2024 – March 2025) we looked at issues affecting those living in rural and remote fuel poverty, and we heard some difficult stories about life in fuel and extreme fuel poverty in rural and remote Scotland. We concluded that a bespoke approach to the structural disadvantage suffered by rural and remote areas is needed to tackle the fuel poverty in these communities, which are consistently ranked as having the highest fuel poverty in Scotland[14], and we made a number of recommendations to the Scottish Government.

Building on this work, we intend to explore what different solutions are being deployed across rural and remote Scotland to mitigate fuel poverty, what issues these unearth and how effectively they are addressing fuel poverty in their local communities.
We will, explore with a range of rural and remote stakeholders, solutions to rural and remote fuel poverty. Following our postponed visit to na h-Eileanan Siar (the Western Isles) last year, we will consider how and where a rural visit could best support this stakeholder engagement.

3. Preparing the groundwork for a deep dive on the impact of fuel poverty on public health.

Last year we started to look at fuel poverty through a health lens. Building on previous discussions about the positive outcomes from Energy Systems Catapult’s Warm Home Prescription Trial (WHP), we heard about the latest iteration of the WHP. We also heard from Public Health Scotland about the linkages between cold homes and poor health outcomes, as well as a new study which is looking at the connection between cold, damp homes and respiratory infections in pre-school children.

We would like to focus in our workplan next year (April 2026-March 2027) on an in-depth look at the connections between fuel poverty and health outcomes, and where re-purposing funding and the transition to low energy heating systems offer opportunities to improve health through a focus on warm homes.

We will:

Engage with Public Health Scotland to understand their data collection and evidence base.
Put out a call for evidence on where fuel poverty interventions have led to positive health outcomes.
Engage further with Energy Catapult Systems WHP, attending their Community of Practice event in September, and learn more about the new possibilities that healthcare and housing data linkage are opening up at the Homes and Healthy Kids Study interdisciplinary event on May 1^st.
Connect with Scottish Government policy officials to explore their work in this area.

4. Other Priorities

As we stated in our last workplan, we endeavour to use our resources to best effect, by working responsively, flexibly, and proportionally so that we can react to, and offer our thinking on, emerging fuel poverty issues. We will fulfil our scrutiny obligations – over above our response to the Scottish Government’s Periodic Report 2021–2024 – when necessary, work to further consolidate our governance infrastructure, and ensure that the Panel is on a firm footing as the first appointment term of its current members draws to a close at the end of December 2025.

Scrutiny and Advice

We will continue to support Scottish Government as it works to develop a monitoring and evaluation framework for its Tackling Fuel Poverty Strategy.
We will look to engage with the Poverty and Inequality Commission as it reflects on the Scottish Government’s next Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plan – offering out thinking from a fuel poverty perspective.
We will engage with Scottish Government officials to offer our views on the eligibility criteria for the next round of Warmer Homes Scotland during the first quarter – April 2025 – June 2025.
We will participate in the further planned Ministerial Social Tariff Working Group meetings.

Governance

We will review this April 2025 – March 2026 workplan towards the end of this calendar year, once we have completed our response to the Periodic Report 2021 – 2024 to see if we need to shift our priorities for the rest of the year in the light of the work on our response and any emerging themes.
We will feed our views into the public appointments’ process for a sixth Panel member, drawing on our experience and learning to date, using our skills’ matrix and looking to our Strategic Plan 2024-2027. In addition, our Chairing Member will be on the recruitment panel for the new appointment. We will also seek to confirm the shape of the Panel for the next 4-year period with Scottish Ministers, as the existing Panel members come to the end of their appointments in December 2025.
We will finalise our risk approach and begin to review, from our perspective, our Framework Agreement with Scottish Government, as its first three-year iteration draws to a close.
We will publish our second annual report (April 2024 to March 2025) covering the last year of our operation in summer 2025.

Collaboration and engagement

Collaboration and engagement, as last year, will continue to underpin this year’s workplan too. Similarly, we will seek every opportunity to engage with and listen to those with lived experience of fuel poverty:
We will reflect on whether our approach to commissioning work to explore the experiences of people living in rural and remote fuel poverty has supported our goal of being informed by evidence from a wide range of sources and stakeholders, including those with lived experience and the organisations that support them.
We will also seek to engage with central and local government, parliamentary committees, third sector organisations, the regulator, and players in the energy sector. We will actively engage with other public bodies where there is a connected interest in fuel poverty and its effects.
We will attend the annual Energy Action Scotland conference which brings together the fuel poverty stakeholder community across Scotland in the Autumn. We will also attend the Scottish Federation of Housing Association Conference in the Summer. We recognise the significant contribution housing associations play in supporting those in fuel poverty but also the issue that, in spite of the higher energy efficiency standards in the social rented sector, their tenants also have the highest rates of fuel poverty by tenure. 61% of households renting from a local authority and 60% of households renting from a housing association are in fuel poverty[15].

How we will monitor the delivery and success of this plan

Delivery – at the time of publication, we plan to meet in-person five times over the lifetime of this plan (April 2025 to March 2026), with additional online meetings as needed to deliver our workplan. We will use our meetings to check in, modify if needed, and monitor the delivery of our workplan, including a more formal review of the workplan once we have submitted our response to the Tackling Fuel Poverty in Scotland: Periodic Report 2021 – 2024.
Success – we will monitor the success of this plan by continuing to develop indicators to evaluate the effectiveness of this plan and by testing the effectiveness of our first assessment of delivery of against plan as reported in our Annual Report for April 2024 – March 2025.

We welcome comments on this plan and approaches for engagement and or collaboration – enquiries@fuelpovertypanel.scot.