Fuel poverty measurement - reflecting higher living costs in remote rural Scotland: 2023 update

3 Results

As both minimum budgets for urban UK and for remote rural Scotland have been uprated based on increases in prices between April 2022 and April 2023, percentage differences between urban UK budgets and remote rural Scotland budgets, and hence the budget uplifts for 2023, are broadly similar to those calculated in 2022. Inflation factors are applied at the level of ‘groups’ within CPI – for example, the weekly food shopping basket is inflated using the inflation factor for April 2022 to April 2023 for ‘01.1 food’ rather than at the level of division (i.e. 01 food and non-alcoholic beverages) (see ONS 2019). A full list of the CPI categories used in uprating the remote rural Scotland budgets is listed in the Appendix. This is particularly important in a period where inflation has been rising dramatically, and where there have been some substantial differences in inflation rates across commodity categories.

Where there are differences between budget categories in minimum budgets, this is due to differences in the composition, for example, of other transport costs. The result of this is that different inflation factors (from different CPI groups) may have been applied to the items within this budget category for urban UK compared to remote rural Scotland. For example, other travel costs for a single working-age adult in urban UK would include travel by rail, bus and taxi, with rail and bus/taxi uprated by different categories within CPI; in remote mainland Scotland, travel by rail and bus has been replaced by a car, while some travel by taxi remains. However, the differences that this produces are small in the context of the overall budgets for each household type.

Households with children

The uplifts for families with children, shown in Table 1, remain very similar to those in 2022. For remote mainland areas, the uplift figure is 14% in 2023, compared to 15% in 2022, and for islands it is 14% as it was in 2022. These results are a consequence of the same inflation ‘factors’ being applied to both urban UK budgets and those for mainland and island areas.

Working-age households without children

For working-age households without children, the budget uplifts have also remained broadly similar, as shown in Table 2. For single working-age adults in remote mainland areas, the uplift is 26% in 2023, compared to 27% in 2022; for islands, the uplift is 29% compared to 31% in 2022. For working-age couples, in remote mainland areas then uplift figure in 2023 is 26% compared with 28% in 2022; in island areas, the uplift is 31% compared to 33% in 2022.

Pensioner households

As shown in Table 3, the pattern for pensioner households is very similar. For single pensioners in remote mainland areas, the uplift in 2023 is 28% in 2023, compared with 30% in 2022; for islands, the uplift figure is 25% in 2023, compared with 26% in 2022. For pensioner couples, the uplift figure in mainland areas in 2023 is 18%, as it was in 2022; for islands, the uplift is 23% in 2023, and was 24% in 2022.

Following the full rebase for all urban UK MIS households in 2024, the 2024 update of remote rural Scotland minimum budgets may result in more differences between categories, depending on decisions about how best to reflect changes in urban UK in remote and rural minimum budgets.

In summary, Table 4 gives the uplifts by household type that should be applied in the calculation of fuel poverty in 2023.