Fuel Poverty and Area Deprivation

Many Barnet residents are not able to heat their homes, or they are not able to turn on the heating until they absolutely need to. This is fuel poverty, a measure indicative of those unable to pay their energy bills, often leaving themselves in the cold.

As a local council, understanding the drivers and risks of fuel poverty can help target where support is needed. Although fuel poverty may seem solely like a cost of energy issue, an analysis project across Barnet set out to determine the underlying socioeconomic challenges that have the strongest impact on whether a household is experiencing fuel poverty.

Officially measured using the Low Income Low Energy Efficiency (LILEE) indicator, a household is fuel poor if both are true:

The household income is below the poverty line after accounting for housing and energy costs.
The household is in a property with low energy efficiency.

As of 2024, 9.4% of households in Barnet experience fuel poverty, up from 9.3% in 2023. London-wide averages have increased from 9.3% in 2023 to 10.3% in 2025. While local authority data is not yet available for 2025, this is a concerning trend. Map 1 shows the distribution of households experiencing fuel poverty at a local scale (Lower-layer Super Output Area) in Barnet, which reveals an assortment of variation across the borough.

The variation in fuel poverty rates range from about 3% to over 16% of Barnet households. Higher concentrations appear in localised pockets, especially towards the southeast. Some of these high concentration pockets include regions in and around Burnt Oak, West Hendon, and Cricklewood.

Although not entirely uniform, the high fuel poverty pockets around Burnt Oak, West Hendon, and Cricklewood, also have high rates of deprivation, as seen in Map 2. These ‘high-high’ areas across the borough highlight where multiple forms of disadvantage overlap. These areas often sit alongside wider social and economic challenges.

Together, the factors that define high deprivation create an environment where households are more vulnerable to rising energy costs. This corresponds to an increased risk of facing fuel poverty, as seen in Map 2. As deprivation is a combined measure of overall disadvantage, this means that the combination of income, employment, health, education, crime, and additional measures all impact fuel poverty more than any one variable itself.