Disabled people are sharing their fears of what rolling blackouts amidst the energy crisis would mean for them and the community as a whole.
However, ministers from three different departments have failed to confirm if they will provide support.
Emergency power cuts this winter could be rolled out across the country and would last around three hours at a time, a spokesperson from the Energy Networks Association said.
Whilst this is bad for everyone as we reach the start of the cold weather, it's particularly worrying for disabled people.
Those with disabilities and long-term conditions rely on constant power to charge equipment like wheelchairs, the running of life-saving equipment like ventilators and machines for feeding and fridges for medication.
Disabled people such as myself also rely on heating a lot more due to conditions that are made worse by the cold.
Vicky Foxcroft, Shadow Minister for Disabled People, submitted written questions to the Secretaries of State for Health and Social Care Helen Whately, Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Felicity Buchan and Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Graham Stuart.
She asked which Minister in their Department is responsible for the safety of people with long-term health conditions who use lifesaving equipment in the event of power blackouts this winter, and if their department will publish its plans for protecting these disabled people.
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, none of them was able to give a straight answer.
Buchan and Stuart both passed the buck to Health and Social Care. However, Buchan also said that her department has been working with Local Resilience Forums in England to “support local areas in their regular planning for winter across a range of risks, including making sure the most vulnerable are supported".
Whately then said she was responsible for caring for people with long-term conditions - finally one of them owned up to it!
However, she then palmed it off to energy companies, saying: “In a power outage scenario, the Priority Services Register is maintained by electricity network operators to support the most vulnerable.”
The problem with this is that in an emergency situation the energy companies can take hours to get to those in need and can only provide temporary help, which isn't enough if you’ve got multiple batteries that need to be constantly charged.
The lack of reassurance isn’t enough when disabled people are worried that their lives will be at risk this winter.
“The fact that there's a worry about whether people can access their life-saving care is like disgusting, there has to be something to be done about it,” say Isabelle Jani-Friend, 24, from Sussex.
Isabelle is worried about how the blackouts would affect the very stringent treatment plan she needs to stick to for her cystic fibrosis.
“I need a lot of medical equipment and that needs to be charged and plugged in, then I need to wash it, clean it and sterilise it," she said.
"And then I need boiling water for sinus rinses that have to do. I have to do all of these things at a certain time and obviously, I don't know when the blackouts are going to be.”
Isabelle’s condition also means that she has to stay warm.
“If I get cold, I become very unwell so I'm kind of scared about what will happen and how I'm going to keep warm because when things get cold and damp. That's really, really bad for my lungs.”
Ginny Butcher, a trainee solicitor from Devon, fears the rolling blackouts after she was hit by the rural blackouts caused by flooding this summer.
During the blackouts earlier in the year, she says she was given a small generator by her electricity provider but “this was precarious, tricky for my Personal Assistants to run - it had to be regularly filled up with fuel - and it could only provide two working plug sockets”.
She shares that her life would be “seriously put at risk” if rolling blackouts happened this winter.
“I may have to leave home and find somewhere else to stay, however the closest person to me that I know has an accessible house lives three hours drive away so in an emergency I could be forced to stay overnight at my local hospital - nobody wants to do this during a pandemic.”
Natalya Dell, a disability activist from London, counts herself “fortunate” that her disability means she won’t struggle without power. However, she is concerned about how it will affect the wider disabled community.
“Many people affected by power cuts won't just be those with life-saving equipment, but people who will suffer, get sick or die because of cold houses, lack of hot water and food, or if things break because of power going on and off and have limited or no ability to get replacements or repairs," she told the Mirror.
“Sadly we can't rely on the government and utility companies or regulators to help us, we need to plan for ourselves and others how to manage with power cuts that may last longer than we expect."
Despite the government referring disabled people to energy companies and the priority service register, the energy industry has been unable to provide any reassurances beyond the blanket “extra help, including advance notice of planned power cuts and priority support”.
Disabled customers have also been warned by the energy companies that they would not be exempt from any blackouts and told that they must be responsible for putting their own safety plans in place.
Speaking exclusively to the Mirror, Shadow Minister for disabled people Vicky Foxcroft said that it was “concerning” that there were no plans in place.
“When the government knows that this might be a problem they should be contingency planning, but it's exactly the same as what happened with the pandemic and unfortunately, disabled people seem to be kind of right down in terms of the bottom in terms of support," she said.
“The government have to go in and get a grip of this before it happens. We can't just have our fingers crossed that these things don't happen when we'll put some people's lives at risk.”
The fact is, this isn’t something that’s just come about, there have been fears of an energy crisis for a long time now and not having a plan that supports us through this is wilfully going to kill thousands of disabled again.
But then, isn’t that just the Tory legacy?
