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• Fuel Poverty (Scottish House Condition Survey)

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Statistics presented here are based on the Scottish House Condition Survey (SHCS), an annual national survey of Scotland's housing stock, which forms part of the Scottish Household Survey (SHS).

The annual SHCS Key Findings report presents the latest national data for key measures of energy efficiency, fuel poverty, energy perceptions and housing quality. The local authority breakdowns provide key indicators at local authority level relating to different household and dwelling types. However three years of data are combined to mitigate the smaller sample sizes involved when analysing sub-national geographies. Therefore, it is important to be aware that for these aggregate time periods:

• The three year average national rates will not match those for single years (also found in the main Key Findings reports).
• Each three year average is a snapshot in time, and because of overlapping years, consecutive releases should not be used to quantify changes in time.
• Notwithstanding the aggregation of three years of data, smaller base sub-samples mean that confidence intervals for different geographies, household and dwelling types will be larger than those reported in the annual Key Findings report.

In July 2019 the Fuel Poverty (Targets, Definition and Strategy) (Scotland) Act received Royal Assent. This Act contains a new definition of fuel poverty which affects how fuel poverty is to be defined and measured. The figures presented are a best estimate of fuel poverty and extreme fuel poverty rates under the proposed new definition of fuel poverty, following amendments agreed at Stage 2 of the Fuel Poverty (Targets, Definition and Strategy) Bill. For further information see the 2018 Methodology Notes.

A household is considered to be in fuel poverty if, in order to maintain a satisfactory heating regime:

• the total fuel costs necessary for the home are more than 10% of the household’s adjusted net income (after housing costs), and
• if after deducting fuel costs, benefits received for a care need or disability and childcare costs, the household’s remaining adjusted net income is insufficient to maintain an acceptable standard of living. The remaining adjusted net income must be at least 90% of the UK Minimum Income Standard to be considered an acceptable standard of living, with an additional amount added for households in remote rural, remote small town and island areas.

Extreme fuel poverty follows the same definition except that a household would have to spend more than 20% of its adjusted net income (after housing costs) on total fuel costs and maintain a satisfactory heating regime.

Where a table shows missing values, the data has either been suppressed on disclosure control grounds, or because there were no sampled cases.